The Vulnerable Pastor

How Human Limitations Empower Our Ministry

Mandy Smith

• Publisher: IVP
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780830841233
• eBook ISBN: 9780830898879
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

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Often as pastors we feel like we need to project strength and competency in order to minister effectively. That's why we go to conferences and emulate the latest superstars. But we know we can never live up to those images. Deep down, we know our own limitations, our weaknesses, our faults. We fear that if people knew who we really are, we'd be disqualified from ministry.

Not so. Mandy Smith unpacks the biblical paradox that God's strength is revealed through our human weakness. Transparently describing her pastoral journey, Smith shows how vulnerability shapes ministry, through our spiritual practices and relationships, influencing our preaching, teaching and even the nuts and bolts of the daily schedule. Understanding our human constraints makes our ministry more sustainable and guards us against disillusionment and burnout.

We don't have to have it all together. Recognizing our weakness makes us rely on God, so our weakness can become a ministry resource. God has called you to lead not as a demigod, but as a human, so the world can see that the church is a place for humans like them.

Part One

GETTING OVER

OURSELVES

Vulnerability with God

1

Filled with Emptiness

The week I stepped into my new role as co-lead pastor I attended a major convention for Christian leaders. For four years I had served as associate pastor alongside my good friend and lead pastor Troy Jackson, and then his growing passion for justice work led us to reduce his workload at UCC to allow him to pursue those opportunities. As we were entering this new partnership, I attended the conference with an open heart, hoping it would equip me for what was ahead. It certainly did, but not in the way I expected.

The more workshops I attended and bookstands I perused, the more strange I felt. Something didn’t feel right. I sat in the sessions and earnestly took notes, waiting for something to connect, but the harder I tried, the more I felt myself sinking. After a day of this discomfort, I found myself at dinner with some of the key speakers. I was surprised to hear myself ask them, “Do you ever feel like you’re making it up as you go along?”

I know they responded to me, but I have no recollection of what they said because none of it gave me what I was really asking for—a glimpse behind the scenes into their human hearts. I’m sure they left wondering, “Who was that awkward person with her odd questions?”

I went to bed that night feeling defeated, but in the morning I psyched myself up for another day.

It was more of the same: programs to plug in that would fix my problems. Systems to integrate that would manage my congregants. Books to buy that would prop up my insecurities. Everything was intended for good, but it was not for me. The programs and measurements of success did not represent me. The assumptions didn’t include me (statements like “All leaders will be motivated by . . . ” and “Your church doesn’t want a leader like this; they want a man who . . . ”). As far as I could tell, no one in this huge gathering of church leaders looked or sounded or thought like me. I hadn’t gone with a chip on my shoulder, expecting to be marginalized. In fact, I had expected to be welcomed and included. But by midday, the sinking feeling returned with greater intensity and I faked a coughing fit to mask my teary departure. Feeling shame at my emotional state, I headed for my hotel room, where I told God, This job isn’t for me. I have nothing to give. You’ve made a mistake.

The realization was so disturbing to me—at forty years of age, after years of prayer and preparation for this role—that for the next twenty-four hours I couldn’t leave my little hotel room. It’s a blur to me now but I remember bouts of tears, dry retching, restless sleep and the kind of prayer that scrapes your insides on its way out. The place inside of me where I go to draw on strength or faith or feeling was a wasteland. If a fire could scorch a desert and leave it drier and deader than it already had been, that was the state of my soul. I longed for God to comfort me with words like, “You’re stronger than you think” and “You’ve got this—look at all the gifts I’ve given you!” But instead, in my despair, God’s voice was assuring but vague.

A broken and contrite spirit I will not despise.

In your weakness I am strong.

Deep truths that felt flat compared to the empty expanse in my soul.

Yeah, yeah, God, I know. Keep trusting in your strength . . . still . . . again.

Although I awoke the next day with eyes swollen closed from crying and my stomach still churning, I knew I had to return to the world. I grabbed something for my headache and invented an explanation for my red eyes. I got through the conference and returned to my home and work, still raw from the experience. We often joke that going to a conference is like drinking from a fire hose. What do you do when it’s more like gulping for air as the torrents threaten to drown you?

A Shaky Beginning

And so I began this new phase of leadership not with assurances of my own ability but with a mental map of every hollow of the cavernous emptiness within me. And yet a sense of God’s strength was enough for me to falteringly step into the work before me. As I did, God helped me get over the rawness of the emptiness and, in the process, get over myself.

When I have no words for my feelings I make a collage. Flipping through magazines and cutting out what resonates (without having to explain why) is like taking a glossy Rorschach test. After hacking up several magazines I had two piles of clippings. In one I gathered:

• I’m embarrassed
• Mistake
• Creative
• Imperfect
• Experimental
• Trust
• Endurance
• Music
• Open
• Jazz
• Free
• Bare it
• Imagination
• A little picture of a naked man riding a bike

The second pile of clippings included:

• Fear
• Win
• Live life on center stage
• Be fabulous
• Control
• Achieve
• Safety (twice)
• Paralysis
• Image
• Feeling like you’ve sold your soul
• Several images of shiny armor
• A woman in a killer pair of heels

I knew there was a choice to make between a life of safety, control and adulation (which felt good but also seemed like a compromise of something valuable) and the risky, experimental life of freedom and heart (which seemed like the right choice but also scared me to death). The scary choice seemed to lead toward God, and yet how could God expect it of me? One thing I knew for sure: I had never been more aware that I was completely limited. I had never felt so filled to the brim with emptiness. This was not the way I expected leadership to feel!

When the safety net has split, when the resources are gone, when the way ahead is not clear, the sudden exposure can be both frightening and revealing. We spend so much of our time protecting ourselves from this exposure that a weird kind of relief can result when we fail. To lie flat on the ground with the breath knocked out of you is to find a solid resting place. This is as low as you can go. You told yourself you would die if it ever came to this, but here you are. You cannot help yourself and yet you live.

Barbara Brown Taylor1

My choices warred in me. (Why couldn’t I just keep the best of both? Could I be on an adventure but still be in total control?) So I played out this war with my paints. It felt right to finger paint first with yellow—thick and lumpy—on a huge old door. Finger painting feels like childhood, like freedom under your fingernails. But when the paint was dry and knobbly, two large black crayon squares wanted to impose themselves on the fun. Strong and perfect (if you’re a Star Trek fan, think the Borg), they wanted to corral the mess. And yet the texture of the yellow kept the black from overcoming and bits of yellow broke through everywhere. After so many hard, dark lines, it was time for some playfulness again and this time green paint squirted itself with abandon across the board, pleasing me with the way it formed tendrils. But the darkness couldn’t abide such joy so, in the form of black shoe polish, it swirled and billowed, threatening to cloud out the life and color. In places it grayed the brightness, but one little green tendril defiantly held back the cloud.

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. . . . Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either daring adventure, or nothing.

Helen Keller2

As I painted, my heart cheered on the color and playfulness, humming all along (“I will sing, sing a new song. How long to sing this song?”), hoping it would win but fearing it wouldn’t. The result of my work could have been a scene from Revelation, but instead of a dragon there were black squares and gray clouds, and the woman had become yellow swirls and green life. I know who overcomes in the end. Without even knowing how to step away from the comfort of black squares, that day I chose to step into the freedom—and vulnerability—of green life.

Daring Adventure or Nothing

At this time a friend shared with me the now-famous TED talks on vulnerability by Brené Brown, who might as well have turned to the camera and addressed me personally as she stated, “Vulnerability is not weakness. Vulnerability is pure courage,” and “Vulnerability is the birthplace of joy, creativity, belonging and love.”3

How does one lead with vulnerability? I’d never seen it done so I had no choice but to jump in. Learning on the job is hard at the best of times. I’d been dropped into the deep end at work before, trying to run a sandwich shop while the lunch line snaked out the door. No one had showed me how to make ten sandwiches at a time while also working the register. But now I was learning on the job before an audience of 160. The stakes were much higher than messing up a few sandwiches.

Now I was stepping into an iconic role—The Pastor—which was not unlike how it had felt to become The Mother. I was living a stereotype: The Pastor is always kind, patient and wise but also strong, capable and decisive. The Pastor can never say, “Can I have a week to make that decision?” or “Can I avoid difficult people when trying to write sermons?” And The Pastor doesn’t express unfiltered feelings—exasperation or annoyance—and certainly never has a full-on sobbing meltdown. The Pastor must reflect nothing less than God himself at all times.

Practicing in Public

It seems I had more to learn about improvisation. I had been so proud years before when I taught myself to play music by heart. Controlling every note had made my performance consistently good, but improvising meant it could be great at the risk of being terrible. Back then I was in a band with six other musicians, so my terrible was covered. Now I was becoming a soloist of sorts and my mistakes were glaringly obvious. Couldn’t I just step aside for six months? A year? To figure out in private how to do this and come back when I was ready? I never asked to practice in public.

I journaled. “Is it my role to fail well? To live an example of brokenness in a public sphere so that others have permission to fail? To give myself grace and say, ‘I’m sorry,’ and trust grace will be given?”

The following pages remained blank.

Brennan Manning came to my side through his memoir, All Is Grace, which opens with a Leonard Cohen poem:

Ring the bells that still can ring.

Forget your perfect offering.

There is a crack in everything.

That’s how the light gets in.4

I copied it onto a chalkboard by my back door and it’s still there, years later.

In the margins of Manning’s book, I scribbled, “Reading this story of a man whose alcoholism drove him to God and gave him a deep understanding of, and ministry of, grace makes me wonder if God doesn’t use us in spite of our brokenness but because of it.”

Here was the beginning of resurrection. A little seed had been planted in me and something living was beginning to shoot from it. Another “friend,” Henri Nouwen, came to cultivate it with these words: “The Christian leader of the future is called . . . to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self.”5

But who was this self I was to offer? I felt like an insecure teenager all over again as I dug inside to work out what God saw in me—and came up with very little. Which is when a trusted mentor cautioned, “Maybe there are messages you’re believing that aren’t from God.”

So I set to making a list of the false messages I believed. Here’s what I wrote:

• I need to perfectly reflect God’s character at all times, never get angry, never upset anyone, never make mistakes.
• I need to represent women pastors well, especially with how I express my feelings and how I look. I should never be girly or frumpy or remind anyone of the baggage they have with their mothers.
• I need to present only fully developed intellectual ideas. My playfulness, stories, creativity and emotion are childish and less significant than ideas and arguments.
• I need to live up to others’ standards.
• I can’t have needs.
• I need to make everyone happy.
• My voice is smaller and less valuable than others’.

Reflect

What are the false messages you believe? Invite a trusted friend to help you name them.

Santa Claus God and Slave Driver God

It was surprising how quickly I could put into words this unspoken self-talk that daily circled my head. And it was surprising how, once out of me, these lies became repulsive. I wanted to step away from them but didn’t know what to step toward. I longed to discover what it could look like to lead from the heart, to have joy in my role, to work without the burden of performance and duty.

These questions were pressing because all the while I was taking on more and more responsibility. While I was questioning what it meant to fill this co-lead pastor role (and the conference I’d turned to for encouragement had left me even less confident), I never considered stepping down. Not out of courage but out of obligation. I was a workhorse, ready to take the load. My co-lead, Troy, was being called into new ministry opportunities, things I’d encouraged him to pursue, and I didn’t want to let him down. When all the leadership transition dust settled it suddenly dawned on me that I’d taken on much more responsibility than I’d anticipated. I was resentful.

I’m trying to raise a family and support my husband in his ministry. Being an associate pastor has been stressful enough! God, why would you lay more on my shoulders?

I stepped into the well-worn slave track. I knew the routine: bear the load so that others can be blessed by God. Don’t complain, do your duty, override your needs and desires. I still hadn’t discovered how to lead from the heart or have joy in my role. A good friend cautioned me, “If you run in your ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword by David Hansen
• Introduction: God Is an Odd Leader
• Part One: Getting Over Ourselves: Vulnerability with God
• Part Two: Being True to Ourselves: Vulnerability Behind the Scenes
• Part Three: Practicing in Public: Vulnerability with an Audience
• Epilogue: Unfading Treasure in Jars of Clay
• Discussion Guide
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Praise for The Vulnerable Pastor
• About the Author
• More Titles from InterVarsity Press
• Copyright