Is holding too tightly to our brightest leaders keeping the church from innovation—and even faithfulness? What if setting free our leaders might allow them to lead us better?
A Quick Fix is No Fix
I’m not sure we, as the Church, are doing great. I know the data bears that out in terms of attendance, those who identify as people of faith, etc, but that isn’t the only thing I mean. As local faith communities continue to reckon with the impact of Covid, the ungrieved grief of the broader culture for what that time was and what we lost, and the residual muscle memory of finding safety in isolation, I’ve noticed how hungry leaders are for deeper discernment, even as the pressure for a quick fix weighs down on them. Lately the leaders I’ve encountered are feeling the weight of how much they don’t know and how deeply they long to connect with what the Holy Spirit is up to in the world. Many of them are not finding that connection readily in the context of their ministry. There is frustration with meaningless tasks, systems that don’t offer connection or solace, cultures of complaint, the maintenance of things as they were. I keep hearing from leaders who are remembering their vocation as it came to them—to bind up the broken-hearted, support the weak, help the afflicted, and the like, and wondering what has happened since they first felt that call—or I hear from leaders who are wondering where that vocational clarity went entirely. Sure, they want more people to come to church or more offering in the plate, but more than that, they want to have a deeper sense of what about our shared life matters in the world.
Since my time in seminary, I have tended to see the church is the only vehicle for my own Christian vocation. Express an interest in the life of faith, and someone will tell you to go to seminary (and here, I don’t think they are wrong). Go to seminary and someone will tell you that you should be a pastor (here I have some questions). But as I find myself in theological higher education and as I work with some of the best pastoral leaders I’ve ever encountered, my imagination is expanding for expressions of Christian vocation in community.
The World Beyond the Church
As we talk with students about seeking out where they see the Holy Spirit working in their neighborhoods and daily lives, I’m starting not just to encounter the Holy Spirit in my own life, but to remember the models of Christian vocation that formed me over and over outside the church walls. The bartenders in Philadelphia, the funeral director across the street, and the urban farm founder down the block–they were all living out vocations of meaning, grace, collaboration, even proclamation. My parents teaching school, my friend JJ taking photos—these are faithful expressions of vocation, many of them leveraging the same skills and the same hopes that were cultivated in me through my ministry training. But for so long, the church has tended to siphon off the leaders that show promise for this kind of faithful work and place them in pulpits, perhaps because we could not imagine something else as holy work, perhaps in a misguided attempt to claim their faithful work for institutions and denominations, perhaps for some other reason entirely. But as we find the church in crisis, with so many leaders wondering where they might seek holy work, I’m thinking about how we might broaden our imagination for living Christianly in the world. I’m wondering if the ministry training and vocational hunger of those who no longer find their calls met in the church might be leveraged for embedded community work and faithful public leadership beyond the role of pastor. Indeed I’m wondering if the embodiment of that imagination might, somewhat ironically, be just what the church needs in terms of leadership.
Letting Go to Connect
What if the call is to set free a significant church asset—the people who serve? What if we were to clear pathways to faithful living through all manner of work, to loosen our grip on the leaders we might hope to own, and support lives of holy work that proclaim grace, collaboration, hope, and truth even in spaces outside church, spaces we have yet to imagine? At PTS, we are thinking a lot about how seminaries might be part of this conversation—not just because theological education has historically participated in forming a monoculture of Christian leadership in service to the Church (which I’m afraid we have), but because faithfulness to our dual standing as educators and church servants dictates that we must.
Faithfulness is only and ever constituted in relationship—faithfulness to God, faithfulness to tradition, faithfulness to others, faithfulness to mission, faithfulness to the world. As an institution that works to keep faith with all these stakeholders—indeed to keep faith with both a secular and a guild theological accreditor, we are accountable to form people for faithful work in the church and in the world. We are in relationship with both. As students ask for support to keep faith with their communities in new ways, part of our work as seminaries is to partner with them in that work. Of course, we are still working on what that might look like, and as always, learning from the students, graduates, and leaders in our context who are already clearing the path.
Karen Rohrer is a Presbyterian pastor, former new faith community convener, and Director of the Center for Adaptive and Innovative Ministry at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. She is desperate to do whatever efficient and impactful work she can undermine a culture that worships efficiency and impact above all else. Her life is awash with ironies named and unnamed, but she is running to name as many as possible. You can find her work in Sustaining Grace: Innovative Ecosystems for New Faith Communities and she would be delighted to have you email her to talk about, brainstorm, or fight about any of the above.