For those who have known me for a while, you know a metaphor I’ve used to talk about my understanding of my calling. I used to say that I always wanted to have “one foot in academics and the other in the local church.” The hope behind this is that somehow, someway I could offer congruence between these two seemingly oppositional worlds. In the halls of the academy, I watched a critique grow that judged how various pastors didn’t use any of their seminary training in the pulpits. A similar critique grew around the same time amongst pastors: that academics had no idea what real ministry was actually like.
I lived this tension.
I have been part of churches that do not value academics. In fact, any sort of formal theological training is discounted and dismissed as irrelevant. I have been in educational environments that readily offer critique of the latest celebrity pastor. I have been to conferences that prop-up the multi-million dollar a year churches. I’ve seen the prestige offered to those from the “right seminary.” And for a while I thought it was my job to hold a foot in each of these worlds, trying to bring them closer together.
As I reflect on my experience in these spaces, I think was I was hearing underneath the surface is hope. Hope for understanding, connection, and influence. I think in some ways the longing to be heard and seen expressed itself in critique because, in nearly every situation, judgement toward the other feels safer than the vulnerability of expressing our longings, desires, and hopes. In hearing these stories, I am a holder of hope. For myself, for others, for futures imagined but not yet realized.
Throughout my seminary experience, I was training in exegesis, church history, leadership, biblical languages, and we read and wrote so much I think we should also be given degrees in literature and composition (but that’s for another time). Underneath that, we are invited to be pastorally sensitive, gifted speakers, solid exegetes, and somehow learn to manage budgets, people, and time. What I wish would have been more upfront in my learning is how to be a holder of hope.
I think the critiques I heard from both sides were actually veiled hopes, but we did not know the vulnerability it requires. Pastors and churches are often permeable but not vulnerable. You can go into the sanctuary but not the green room. Academics are often transparent but not vulnerable. They expose every aspect of a theory but facts don’t create meaningful change.
I think the critics may have been saying, “I wish I knew how to offer something that is valuable, relevant, and transformational.” What would it look like to re-wed these two?
Judgments and critiques are often a tactic to avoid our discomfort and vulnerability, which I confess is also at play in myself. Here I do the very thing I critique, but perhaps this journey is part of our collective processing.
Something I’m observing in the hospital is the freedom to express hope. Sometimes, it is in seemingly small things. I’ve heard patients hope they get a blueberry compote tart with lunch. I’ve heard hopes to be discharged and go home, get back to vacation plans, or to be back with beloved animals. I’ve heard more desparate hopes. Hopes for cure, for life, and for the afterlife.
We know that courage requires us to be scared. But what are the ingredients for hope? For one, it requires the capacity to hold the vulnerability of longing. Hope requires a degree of discomfort and/or distress. Hope invites us into the already but not yet. How brave it is to hope.
I have updated the metaphor I use. Perhaps it is because I completed my doctorate and continue to find ways of learning new things or that the world of administrative oversight is one that now exhausts my energy. I like to think of myself as having both feet planted where I am. Today, that is home in Montana. This is the world that I want to bring congruence to. My home, my family, my town.
What metaphor or image do you use to understand your contribution or calling?