TheyCallMePastorBryan

This is a post from when my blog was on wordpress. I’ve gone through and made a few minor changes, but mostly it’s the same.

For a while I’ve been fascinated with Saint Francis of Assisi.  One of the most interesting things to me about Francis is the seriousness with which he took Jesus commands to His disciples about how they were to go out to witness.  Part of that seriousness meant that to be a Franciscan was to take on a number of vows, among which was a vow of poverty.  That is, that the people in the Franciscan order chose to be purposely poor as Christian ministers.

I sometimes wonder if we were to look at the ministries that get attention today, if we wouldn’t end up with a very different set of values.  Namely, that our mandate would be that every pastor make a vow of affluence.  He would be required to drive a nice car, to wear fashionable clothes, to be paid a hefty salary to do the Lord’s work.  To even approach a poverty level would mean that this man was not in God’s will, that somehow he was doing something wrong.

This seems to be more the attitude of how we as Christians in the U.S. approach ministry- Pastors should be well off, so should parishioners.  If someone is poor in the church, it is most likely because they are not tithing enough, or they don’t have enough faith to claim their riches.  If you were to ask most folks what a pastor looks like, most would be quick to point out that a pastor would wear a nice suit and have a big smile.  You know, the Joel Osteen kind of image.  The “come to Jesus and then you’ll win the lottery” gospel that says that what God really cares about is making all His followers rich and successful according to the American grid of what success is.

If we don’t have that image of ministry, we have the other side, the young, trendy pastor.  This image is sometimes morphed with the young, trendy “guys need to be uber-masculine” pastor.  There is a trend that either paints Christians as all needing to be artsy, slight hipsters, or to be the guy who could “kick someone’s @$$”.  Regardless of which type we go with, the message stays the same- American Christianity is about the values of people who have money.  We don’t hear anybody giving a message about embracing poverty(okay there actually might be a few, but they are few and far between).

What I’m talking about is not really poverty itself.  I don’t think that it is something that all could purposefully take on.  I am far from having a vow of poverty, but neither do I want to end up on the other side.  All in all we are way too concerned with image.  Whether it’s dressing trendy or wearing the nice suit, it boils down to image.  We feel that we need to portray something so that being a Christian will be more attractive to others.  And that vow of poverty thing definitely wouldn’t fit with the whole idea of image.  That is unless there was a way to be cool by choosing to embrace poverty, then it would be all fine.

I am tired of the idea that Christians(and therefore pastors) need to have the image. What if we stopped worrying about the external things that everyone else worries about and instead started worry about things that matter: caring for the poor, or God forbid, keeping in mind Jesus who chose to turn over His riches and unite Himself to His creation(which chose to reject Him).  And even then Jesus chose to enter in a lowly place.  He was no super-successful business man, He chose to take on the form of a servant, and even then to subject Himself to the lowest death possible: death on a cross.

I don’t get this message nearly as much as I should, that much is certain.  But what I do know is that if I take this Jesus seriously I have to stop worrying about what’s cool, or try to have a certain image.  There’s a lot about Jesus which is considered foolish or weak or even offensive.  I would imagine being His follower should bring about the same.