UCC minister G. Jeffrey MacDonald argues in today’s New York Times that American clergy are burned out because their congregations want sermons that entertain rather than offer moral counsel.
Congregations gone wild
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10 responses to “Congregations gone wild”
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So some clergy find that the exciting environment of seminary isn’t duplicated in local communities. I doubt Rev. MacDonald’s diagnosis and I have a hard time mustering sympathy.
Some communities are mature in the Gospel, and some tragically not. It would seem the task of pastors is to lead, and perhaps, like Moses, it’s going to happen on the scale of decades, not weeks.
I’m sure the prospect of taking a whole generation to lead a community to a better expression of Christ’s mission is unbelievably daunting to some. Are such people a good fit for ministry?
Wouldn’t we all love full-throated singing congregations who serve the poor and can chat with us about theological scholarship over croissants and a latte? Is it realistic to think that just because we believe we absorbed Vatican II (or modern Protestant ministry) we will always serve people of like minds?
So sure, burnout is a problem. But the cure is not necessarily a feel-good work environment.
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Todd, I don’t really hear this minister asking for a feel-good work environment, or one that’s more like seminary. It’s more that he sees the sort of preaching he traditionally does being eroded by the canons of the entertainment world. Of course there is a built-in stress level in all ministry, because people in congregations have different ideas about what’s wanted. And then there’s the tension between the leader and the led—a creative tension that has to be managed well or it can cause a breakdown. But I think he is right to point to global shifts that favor entertainment. It should concern us.
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Thanks, Rita. I’m likely reading too much between the lines on Rev MacDonald’s story here. Maybe more than preachers, musicians experience pressure on the “entertainment” front. I’d like to think I haven’t attended too much to morphing myself into a liturgical Manilow or Springsteen. But the places that hired me probably weren’t looking for that, anyway.
Like most Protestant ministers, I serve at the choice/whim of other people. So I feel sensitivity to those who might feel they have to compromise principles in order to remain employed.
On the other hand, I’ve found that even entertainment-oriented people appreciate quality. Even more, I find that congregations appreciate pastoral ministers who are willing to journey with them, cry and laugh with them, and so on. The “secret door,” if you will, is not usually the Sunday gathering, but the hospice, the emergency room, the rehab center, or the lonely, empty house.
And even if a community is supersaturated with the gospel of entertainment/prosperity and looking for that charismatic leader-figure, I would see a pastor’s duty to wean them off that.
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“The UCC has roots in the “covenantal” tradition—meaning there is no centralized authority or hierarchy that can impose any doctrine or form of worship on its members. Christ alone is Head of the church. We seek a balance between freedom of conscience and accountability to the apostolic faith. The UCC therefore receives the historic creeds and confessions of our ancestors as testimonies, but not tests of the faith.”
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+JMJ+
Ray, are you implying that the pastor-author is aiming for something outside his faith tradition’s tradition?
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“Public health experts who have led the studies caution that there is no simple explanation of why so many members of a profession once associated with rosy-cheeked longevity have become so unhealthy and unhappy.” I urge you to read the original burnout article.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/02/nyregion/02burnout.html?pagewanted=all
Suggestions in that article:
1. Clerics need to take more time off. Catholic canon law requires priests to take a spiritual retreat each year, and four weeks of vacation.
2. Too many clerics have are too easily overtaken by the urgency of other people’s needs.
3. Aging and shrinking of congregations,
4 Dwindling availability of volunteers in the era of two-income households,
5. Likelihood that a male pastor’s wife has a career of her own,
My thoughts: How may competition among churches changed in recent decades.
A perhaps healthy competition of denominations fed the growth of religion to its peak in church attendance in the 50’s, a period when we had rosy-cheeked longevity. Most of competition was over the un-churched.
Now we have much switching among denominations. Also competition for persons from religion available by books, TV, radio, and internet. Competition has shifted from the denominational to congregational level, requiring far greater attention to individuals, and putting ministers at far greater personal risk.
Your thoughts?
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One of the stresses is that in a lot of cases certain members of the congregation are also in charge of renewing contracts.
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Yes, a Protestant minister once told me that the congregation leaders “remind us that we are just the hired help.”
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+JMJ+
My local Catholic radio station often repeats this quote attributed to Archbishop Fulton Sheen: “If you want people to stay the same, tell them what they want to hear. If you want people to change, tell them what they need to know.”
From the article: “A few years ago, thousands of parishioners quit [two churches] when their respective preachers refused to bless the congregations’ preferred political agendas and consumerist lifestyles.”
I think the author is lamenting the fact that the pastor’s understanding of his vocation “to help people grow spiritually, resist their lowest impulses and adopt higher, more compassionate ways” is challenged by the average church-goer’s desire to grow materially, to be affirmed in their own (undeveloping) consciences, and adopt easier, more comfortable ways. This is why many people “church-shop”, I suppose, because they’re not so much searching for eternal beatitude (with persecutions in this life) but temporal happiness (with comforts in this life).
“keep my sermons to 10 minutes, tell funny stories and leave people feeling great about themselves”
Jesus gave some long, some short, sermons; I wouldn’t call His stories “funny”, per se… maybe peculiar! And people left feeling different (transfigured, per the Anglican sermon of Aug. 6) about themselves.
Plain and simple, “the comforting, amusing fare we want” is not “spiritual leadership”!
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I may not know anything about art, but I know what I like.
What slays me three/four Sunday Masses per week is that all are, more often than not, subjected to a “re-arranging of the Titanic’s deck chairs” homelitic modality. That is characterized by a dry, unamplified, pedestrian (not even pedantic, that would be an improvement) restatement of the fairly pristine and occasionally arcane phrases of the scriptures. And this modality doesn’t incline the ear towards staying with a presumably present dialectic point. This is as empty of spiritual calories as the jokes and Louis Armstrong “It’s a wonderful world” style. If, for no other reason, this paucity provides credence for the use of great hymnody, particularly at the Offertory. I’d be happier if the homilist would simply give a decent recitation of the Nicene Creed every Sunday, rather than some banal exegesis. Heck, I’d be happier if Jonathan Edwards showed up at the ambo a-preaching damnation and hellfire just to see the congregation “Wake, o wake and sleep no longer.”
I am channeling my memories of the 80’s here; anyone remember:
1. The “1984” Orwellian Apple commercial (intoducing the Macintosh PC) where the faceless automatons’ viewing of Big Brother is interrupted by the lone female athelete who hurls a ball and chain which explodes the screen image of BB?
2. The depiction of dynamic opposites of homeletics protrayed in the play “Mass Appeal?” Do we really want to afflict the comfortable or…
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