The following story comes from Lark News, a Christian website that shows the lighter side of the faith through the medium of satire.
NAPERVILLE, Ill. — Brentwood Community Church’s congregation has asked its pastor to stop using the pulpit as his public confessional and to set boundaries on what he’s willing to share.“Every week he confesses another personal weakness,” says one member. “You get twitchy wondering what’s next.”
The personal confession streak started after Pastor Greg Ott attended a pastors conference in Chicago. He returned and told the church he was embracing a “new vulnerability” with them.
“That sounded great until we realized it meant he would dump his dirty laundry on us every Sunday,” says one church member.
In the rhythm of his sermon, Ott’s confession usually comes a third of the way through, his people say. On a recent Sunday morning the congregation seemed to collectively cringe as he stepped around the pulpit and said, “Let me be real transparent with you …”
“I brace myself until he spits it out,” says Jocelyn Garnet. “It makes for a tense service.”One week Ott admitted he was sometimes tempted to claim Starbucks food purchases as ministry-related tax deductions. Another time he said he “struggled with angry outbursts,” and occasionally “barked” at fast food drive-thru employees. He even said he sometimes walks “a little too slowly” by the Victoria’s Secret store in the mall.
Lay leaders decided to broach the matter with Ott because the church was getting a reputation as the home of the “TMI pastor,” (short for “too much information”).
Ott says he just wants to be real with his people.
“I struggle like they do,” he says. “It’s okay for them to know that.”
But many in his church disagree.
“I don’t stand in the foyer and announce my weekly failings,” says Robert Walker, 79. “I want to be uplifted at church. One hopes the pastor would lead by good example, not regale us with his peccadilloes.”
And as a parting shot, even though this is soooo 2005 Super Bowl, it is still true enough to life:
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10 comments
Michael says:
Oct 5, 2009
For me, it depends on how the details are shared and what they purpose in the message is.
I recently attended a Vineyard church at the request of some friends. The guest pastor gave the sermon, and it was centered around an extremely trying time in his life. Unfortunately, he glossed over the really applicable things – how to make it through the day when everything you've built your life on is gone or crumbling – and threw some standard Christianese at us ("Put your hope in the Lord") without talking at all what that really means – or what that meant for him.
I frankly prefer a message that's based on personal experience, as I think it will be more humble and heartfelt, rather than a message designed to make me feel bad and then tell me how to feel better. A truly confessional message would be, I think, encouraging and hopeful – but I suppose the danger is in giving the speaker an open door for raging narcissism.
I've just lost my taste for people who don't know me or my life at presuming to know exactly how a passage in 1 Samuel applies to my life. Tell me who it applied to yours, and tell me how God worked in the every day details of your life.
Michael says:
Oct 5, 2009
Just for the sake of clarity, the "Michael" above is not the ill-tempered old Calvinist lawyer "Michael" who likes to cause trouble. This is he.
StampDawg says:
Oct 5, 2009
You guys should huddle and find a way to distinguish yourselves. The Dr. Seuss solution of numbering may work (Thing 1 and Thing 2 from THE CAT IN THE HAT) or you may take your cue from beloved Anglican Lewis Carrol and try a TweedleDee and TweedleDum approach.
There are many possibilities.
John Zahl says:
Oct 5, 2009
My opinion: I think most ministers should be in therapy. They owe it to their congregations. When a minister uses the pulpit as a therapist's couch, things become very awkward, especially if he/she cannot get through an illustration without crying (tell-tale sign the story should not have been shared in the first place). At the same time, if the minister has not personally had heart-felt digestive experience with the material he/she proclaims, the message will accordingly fall short of connecting with its hearers.
John Zahl says:
Oct 5, 2009
love of god for sinners is conveyed primarily through understanding (I.e, not encouragement). If a person in the pew feels understood, they will draw near to god in faith. I think, for example, that it is this gift of comprehending the human psyche that explains tim keller's most notable success as a greatly loved preacher. Platitudes, the common pulpit alternative, don't get anyone very far.
solarblogger says:
Oct 5, 2009
There are a couple of ditches here. The first would be where the confessions were done for the sake of "getting things off his chest." This is not done for the congregation's sake. It should not be done.
On the other hand, I think that some pastors don't go far enough when they do this. To illustrate a passage on temptation (1 Corinthians 10:13, for example), I don't think the temptation to eat too much chocolate cake is a good illustration. This makes it sound as if the pastor is under very trivial temptations to the point where he probably cannot relate to the real ones his congregation faces.
But I think some of these problems come from thinking that moral application is the main purpose of preaching. If it isn't, then the occasions for this kind of thing should be fewer and farther between.
The 1 Corinthians passage seems to be talking about temptations to gross idolatry or apostasy, not to be lax with a self-improvement program. A pastor should be talking about temptations related to staying in the faith when this passage comes up. It's a sign of the triviality of our culture that everyone likes to talk about dieting instead.
dpotter says:
Oct 5, 2009
Thank you for your comments everyone. Like most of us, I find there is a difference between the pastor (or individual) who shares something personal as a gesture of humility and the one for whom such sharing is essentially a rhetorical device.
There is much to be said for the internalization of the Scriptures before they are preached, and since we are rational/emotional beings, it seems to me that pastors run the risk of falling off the wagon by going too far in one direction or the other. The pastor who equates internalisation with intellectual mastery will end up a distant figure from the congregation–all the critical historical-grammatical tidbits in the world will never bring about the sort of vertical sermon we aim/thirst for. On the other hand, the pastor who is always emoting their way through the text runs the risk of preaching her/himself rather than the cross…or at best, ends up sentimentalizing the Gospel. Perhaps there is a true Hegelian dialectic to be had here, but as some have pointed out, the pastor has to be self-aware without being too calculated (a problem for those of us who like to live in our heads a little too much) so that they can be free to care about the parishioner.
I think what bothers some people about pastoral transparency is not that the clergyperson has had this experience or the other, but that they have failed to adequately filter that experience through the Scripture they are attempting to preach. That said, pastoral work can be a brutal and emasculating job, and I wonder if some of the Christianese we hear/preach is not somehow related to a fear on the pastor's part that they will lose the congregation's respect. Perhaps there is a case to be made for private confession and spiritual directors in addition to therapists?
Michael says:
Oct 6, 2009
First, this is the non-Calvinist Michael writing.
For the record, I don't advocate the sermon-as-therapy. The concerns and critiques offered above for that approach are valid and important.
But to quote an old Charlie Peacock song, "You can only possess what you experience." As John Zahl wrote above, if the people hearing the sermon feel understood, the message itself will find easier passage to spirit, heart and mind.
Providentially, internetmonk has a great post from yesterday that dovetails nicely with this one, about the role and nature of the sermon in evangelical liturgy. I recommend it highly:
http://www.internetmonk.com/archive/the-evangelical-liturgy-14-the-sermon
dpotter says:
Oct 6, 2009
Michael, thank you for the link on preaching…that ought to be perma-linked somewhere on M'bird.
Mike D. says:
Oct 8, 2009
Sometimes pastor idolatry or clericalism must be overcome.
Sometimes the struggle is the for the preacher to convince the people that he really is a person, i.e. has sins and struggles that everyone does and therefor can relate, making his message "relevant". It's almost a "yeah, me too".
This can be the showmanship which comments above have already spoken of, or it can be genuine. If both the people and the preacher have a good low anthropology, however, then there will be little need for showmanship and the preacher can go to private confession (or therapy) like the rest of us.
So, Potter, to answer your question, I guess every time a sermon gets too personal there should be a gut check and a prayer. "Selfish Ambition and Vain Conceit", or "of like mind with Christ?" The point is to point to the Cross, not self, right?