a friend of mine is about to be canned from his job in a religious denomination. he doesn't know it, has no way of seeing it coming, but like the surety of rain in bc, it's going to happen whether he wants it to or not.
he has a huge problem, by evangelical standards. he is passionate, unpolitical, driven, and often given to an acute case of honesty. he's probably adhd. in the course of his "ministry" i have seen him piss off more people and get more done than anyone else i have ever known. he is a dervish. but for some reason he has gotten himself in over his head - he accepted a position within the mainstream and tried to implement change from within. they simply cannot handle his audacity and flare. goodbye friend.
i had a conversation with a mainline pastor recently. over the course of an hour he came to the conclusion that i was a "wildman". it's laughable actually. by most secular standards i am incredibly conservative. he admitted that there was probably no room for someone like me on his team. that's ok, i wasn't really looking. it was interesting, though, to debate intellectually the problem with such judgments. denominations, by their own admission, are looking to do "out of the box" stuff, radically change the world, and experiment with post-modernity and relevence to the secular community. they are mainly trying to do this with the tools they already have. my friend is working within a denomination that prides itself as being on the 'cutting edge' (yuk) yet cannot deal with someone who is far closer, yet still distant, to the society they are trying to impact. in fact, if you look around, most religious types have a remarkably similar personality. they are somewhat outgoing though politically astute. they fall within the middle of the personality continuum. it's shocking actually. there are few marginal personalities that ever thrive in professional ministry. and again, like so many who have gone before him, my friend will soon find himself in some para-church organization or secular employment that is more suseptible to his unique gifts and radical abilities.
he has a huge problem, by evangelical standards. he is passionate, unpolitical, driven, and often given to an acute case of honesty. he's probably adhd. in the course of his "ministry" i have seen him piss off more people and get more done than anyone else i have ever known. he is a dervish. but for some reason he has gotten himself in over his head - he accepted a position within the mainstream and tried to implement change from within. they simply cannot handle his audacity and flare. goodbye friend.
i had a conversation with a mainline pastor recently. over the course of an hour he came to the conclusion that i was a "wildman". it's laughable actually. by most secular standards i am incredibly conservative. he admitted that there was probably no room for someone like me on his team. that's ok, i wasn't really looking. it was interesting, though, to debate intellectually the problem with such judgments. denominations, by their own admission, are looking to do "out of the box" stuff, radically change the world, and experiment with post-modernity and relevence to the secular community. they are mainly trying to do this with the tools they already have. my friend is working within a denomination that prides itself as being on the 'cutting edge' (yuk) yet cannot deal with someone who is far closer, yet still distant, to the society they are trying to impact. in fact, if you look around, most religious types have a remarkably similar personality. they are somewhat outgoing though politically astute. they fall within the middle of the personality continuum. it's shocking actually. there are few marginal personalities that ever thrive in professional ministry. and again, like so many who have gone before him, my friend will soon find himself in some para-church organization or secular employment that is more suseptible to his unique gifts and radical abilities.
posted by Scott at 1/12/2009
6 Comments:
Hmmmm, as the quote goes: "if you build it they will come".
It sounds like you and your friend have a reason and an opportunity to start a church for the unchurchy.
I know that you've been there, done that. However you would do it differently this time around.
?
Right off the bat, I think it's a questionable practice for organization to let someone other than the employee know of their impending dismissal first.
I doubt your friend would fit into a parachurch structure a whole lot better than into a church structure. I was actively involved for several years with both the Navigators and Campus Crusade - and while they initially appeared a little more 'cutting edge', they were both as underlyingly conservative and hierarchical as the church in the end.
I think people with 'unique gifts and radical abilities' often end up as entreprenuers in the secular world - and I'm quite convinced that's a good thing. In fact, when we hire our gay japanese waiter to run martini nights for our underground church/restaurant, why don't we find a position for your buddy as well?!
Don't you think that when people say they want 'out of the box', they really want... a slightly different shaped box, a shallower box, a deeper box, a different colour box, or maybe the same box moved over a couple feet? They still want a box though.
"cutting edge" was the same thing I was labeled. I think that is just a cop out by on organization that fights to keep it's "club status.
I have lived this "beautiful collision."
I was diagnosed late in life with ADHD. I had the big evangelical church, Youth Pastor job with big budget lines and a youth group larger than most congregations. I asked the wrong questions, got the students creating uneasy dinner conversations about justice, poverty, consumerism, faith.
I know that some of the undoing was indeed my own fault.
I know that many core problems that exist in these kinds of churches exceed one person's ability to influence significantly, much less change.
I know that church staff that tend to the younger, non-voting, non-tithing members is the low one one the church totem pole.
When you stand in this place and ask the "wrong" or "dangerous" questions the group has two choices - listen or don't.
If they listen, they begin to change and the problem goes away. It they don't, they problem doesn't go away. So to make it go away - you go away.
No more questions = no more problem.
At least that is how it seems to play out.
I could take a guess as to which "cutting edge" denomination he's a part of.
And I'm with Lori on parachurch groups. My sister-in-law is on staff with Campus Crusade, and the amount of restrictions and rules that they put on people is mind-blowing.
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