Why ‘The Glass Pastor’? Whenever that moniker occurred to me, I think I must have been struck by my own understanding of the two operative words: ‘Pastor’, a shepherd, and ‘Glass’, that which is transparent and breakable. As I now reflect on my own professional career in Christian evangelicalism, I understand that during all those years, I was neither; neither transparent, nor a shepherd.
I was, instead, like my mother before me, a showman; a performer who found a stage, a microphone, and a full-time, paying gig to go with them. The fact that I was called ‘pastor’ never gave me any inward assurance that this is what I was. What I was, I suppose, was whatever the people who decided to be influenced by me needed; a ‘spiritual leader’, a hero, an example, a model, and maybe just someone to deflect anger toward when the Christian promise of joy in this life isn’t fulfilled.
Don’t get me wrong, for my part I did my best to play the role of ‘pastor’, but I always knew that I would not be able to really pull it off. First of all, I didn’t really buy it. There aren’t any church pastors in the New Testament, and I could never get past that. Moreover, I was simply not emotionally healthy enough for the job. I had far too many secrets concerning the neurosis that filled my psyche. So, I became instead, an actor. I found, to my surprise, that I was able to act pretty competently. I say ‘pretty’, because all along the way I failed people pretty flagrantly, and caused more than a few people to take me off of their ‘like’ lists. But, and for this I am grateful, never did I tamper with money, nor did I ever mess around in any way with any woman other than my wife. Indeed, over my 33 years as a full-time senior pastor, never did I have a salary of more than $45,000 per year.
So, I suppose I was reliable, and in some sense ‘trustable’. But in other ways, I was a stunning disappointment to those who threw in their lot with my leadership(or lack thereof). In fact, there were two different occasions when I knew that I should quit and get out, but on both occasions all I could think of was what a quitter and ‘abandoner of the sheep’ that would make me.
The first occasion was the launch service of our new building in Surprise in 2005(or 2006?). I remember seeing the 435 people that attended, and realizing two things: first that this would be the largest service we would ever have, and second that the whole thing, the new building, the idolizing of growth, the excitement of numbers, that all of it, made me literally sick to my stomach. I wanted no part of it. It turned out that it was, by far, the largest service we ever had, and I did get heartsick over the false joy and excitement, so that I was gone just a few years later.
The second occasion was at a particularly grievous meeting of elders and deacons, in which the crux of the meeting was the angry expressions by some of these men concerning the fact that ‘worship’ was lousy. I will never forget that. I remember the sickness I felt inside when I realized that we who professed to be representatives of Jesus on earth, could not get past our hostility over the style or competence of our church’s ‘worship'(whatever that is). This would have been about 2008, or 2009, and I realized once again that I was in over my head. But, being the neurotic and the actor that I had become, I was neither able nor willing to pull the plug, and simply check out.
I have said before and remain convinced that no one did wrong, or did me wrong. At the end, the narrative was that I ‘had retired to pursue a real estate career’. This was not the case, but in the church world, we often must portray what we hope will cause the least alarm among the ‘sheep’. In spite of this, all of us, (and I hope someday that those whom I have angered over the years will find this in their hearts), all of us were simply doing the best we knew how to do. Being as unbiblical as it is, the current organized church model, with its paid executives, contrived spiritual hierarchies, and pervasive failure to bring any true transformation to anyone’s life; this model is a harsh and merciless taskmaster toward all its participants. All of us did no more and no less than we were at the time capable of. We were struggling in a dysfunctional corporate and social system, one that had a life of its own, and one that ran counter to any possibility of finding the true grace of God in our midst. It was not personal. There were no bad people. There are only bad ideas and bad beliefs. Until we cut these loose, these ideas and beliefs will continue to be our task-masters, causing us, in our misery, to blame one another for those things that we ourselves have chosen.
The Glass Pastor
The Glass Pastor 