Who’s Your Daddy?

Wednesday March 25, 2009 • 79 Comments 

By John Immel

Her Daddy told her this day would come. He told her there would be boys who took her out for a drive, who said they wanted to know her better. She’s sixteen, with a boy she likes, big baby blues wide with affection. He’s whispering sweet nothings in her ear. It feels right, but it doesn’t. Something is missing, but she can’t tell what exactly. He keeps telling her this is what people do when they get to know each other.

But should they be doing…this?

Respect yourself, her daddy says.

Don’t give yourself away.

Expect commitment!

Be cautious with intimacy.

But…oh the sweet agony…

The boy is giving her attention, he’s focused on her. Whispering in her ear, telling her how pretty, how valuable, how profound it is that God would put her in his life.

She wants to belong!

She doesn’t want to make him angry.

A kiss here…

A touch there…

Is this wrong?

She hesitates, wanting him to give part of himself, wondering what his commitment is to this intimacy.

He looks angry.

More?

But…

On with my scandalous metaphor

Having interaction with modern Church Leaders is a lot like this.

Outrageous, you say!

Really?

Certainly my metaphor is inflammatory but the goal is not sensationalism. I am shining a glaring light on exploitative interactions embedded in leadership presumption, the exploitation of our deep-seated need to belong somewhere, to be loved for the sum of our value, to be affirmed in our identity.

I speak from personal experience. Tell me if you see yourself in these words.

During a summer break from college I was asked by a pastor from a large local church to do some broom-pushing work at his church. This church preached that members had an obligation to serve, that doing menial tasks was a sure ministry progression path. I had no reason to doubt the teaching-at the time-about being a submitted worker and waiting on metaphoric tables. I believed the rhetoric that at the right moment the appointed authorities would see my longstanding work ethic, my faith, and “promote” and “release.”

I was traveling to said pastor’s church, chatting about this, that, and the other, feeling good because, Wow, this pastor wants to know me. Wow he wants to find out about little old me. Wow he wants to talk about himself.

As we talk he slips me this Spiritual Roofie: “So, John, what people do you feel limited by?”

I wanted to be accepted. I wanted him to hear my humility in my candor. I wanted him to affirm my self-assessment. I wasn’t threatened by a limitation but was aware of it. Besides, can you imagine the reaction had I said: “Well, I don’t think I have any limitations?” So I said:  “I don’t think I would do real well with youth. I don’t think I have a calling to kids because the things I have to say they wouldn’t understand.”

Whatever I expected him to say, it wasn’t this:  “With that attitude, John, God will not be able to use you. Unless you are willing to start at the bottom and, ‘push a broom for a while,’ He’ll never promote you.”

EEEEEK! Repent! Sackcloth and Ashes!

I wasn’t quick on the draw those many years ago, so I never really responded to what the pastor said. But I felt used. I felt exploited. I felt that my words were twisted to mean things that I never really meant them to mean. I had given transparency, because I thought that was what was expected and I was exploited just like that shy girl in the backseat of a car. He had used a Spiritual Roofie to disarm me for the sole despicable purpose:

“…you will encounter a man or woman who’s real motive for enforced transparency is to supply information for critique, condemnation, judgment, qualification, and authenticity. These are the college frat-boys who can’t get a woman, can’t get ANY form of intimacy without criminal, despicable actions. These are the folks who couch their appeal to DEEPER relationship so that refusal to open up to THEM is part and parcel of falling away, part and parcel of rejecting GOD, and the Church.”

The pastor had no right to take such liberties with me as a human being, even if it were true that my ATTITUDE was wrong. Even if it were true that all ministry is achieved by recognized service and subsequent promotion: the Pastor had no right to use my candor as a spring board for his Broom-Pushing Theology.

He graduated bible school and started his ministry life in a youth group. After years of working with kids he was tapped to be an associate pastor at a growing mega church. And then he was given the Senior Pastor role at a church planting. In his mind, that path was how he got into his current place:  recognized service and subsequent promotion. My candor unwittingly stepped into the middle of his doctrinal expectation. I wasn’t paying homage to Broom-Pushing Theology.

Notice that I suffered because of three key relational dynamics:

  • 1. The desire to be accepted, valued, and embraced.
  • 2. A doctrinal expectation that eradicated personal boundaries.
  • 3. The catastrophic teaching of Broom-Pushing Theology.

I don’t for a moment believe that the aspiration to be accepted, desired, or embraced is a bad motive. However, my eagerness to accept the requirement of soul transparency coupled with the hope that I might be found desirable is what put me in the position to be exploited–much like the shy girl in the back of the car.

I do believe the next two points are bad. The Pastor used a Spiritual Roofie on me to lower my personal boundaries and engage in unearned intimacy. I quote myself from this post:

“These men and women are the worst sort of humans, using the heady power of personal insecurity and spiritual manipulation to command intimacy, command transparency, demand familiarity.”

He judged my attitude based on a wonderful theological fiction that necessitates GIFTING be earned like JOB skills and ministry is bequeathed to those who master a humble attitude via menial tasks.

I was 20 when my car ride took place and not seasoned enough to understand what had really happened. Nor did I understand what happened in subsequent interaction with numbers of other leaders. To my growing frustration, I handled the exploitation with ever decreasing success. I tried all the harder to fit in, flinging the clothing off my soul, flashing any and all spiritual voyeurs.

Did it work? No. Never.

The specifics tended to change from leader to leader, pastor to pastor, but I always heard some variation of “God can not use you until…”

And funny thing: God’s ability to use me was always some qualifying personal revelation that THEY needed from me. And further funny thing: the only way to give THEM that revelation was for me to push yet another broom ever more naked for their voyeuristic pleasure.

How could this be?

Was I that far off the mark?

A realization came years later: God was already using me. I lost count LONG AGO the number of strangers who would come up to me off the street and ask for prayer. I suspect the numbers are in the thousands where my hands have been the conduit of healing, and financial blessing, and my voice has been the medium of teaching, and compassion, and exhortation to people outside of that building we call Church. At every turn God was/is affecting people through me.

So how was it that the leaders that I offered such absolute transparency did not see this? How could the assessment of “Authorities” be so dramatically different than those whom my skills and talents and anointing had helped?

The answer is unflattering. They treated me like a shy girl in the backseat of a car. The pastor of my anecdote is a prime example. He had no interest to KNOW me. He mandated my intimacy and used it for his own purpose. He demanded transparency and used that to qualify or disqualify me for something he thought he should arbitrate.

What did he think he should arbitrate? Everything.

What was his commitment to the relational intimacy? Nothing.

The inequity in this “relationship,” this unearned intimacy, gave him the ability to pick and choose what parts he was interested in using.

When was the last time you had a conversation with a leader where they told you as much about themselves as you felt compelled to share about yourself? Leaders feel an enormous freedom to pressure transparency from “laity” yet lead intensely private lives.

Call a preacher with his name on the marquee and ask them out for a soda some time. NOT A COUNSELING SESSION. A soda and a chat about whatever you find mutually interesting: a meeting of equals. Try carrying on a conversation with them about THEIR lives and you will find them utterly inaccessible.

The tyranny comes when leadership creates doctrines of obligation that demands transparency of people in exchange for approval and acceptance. When leaders have no intention of reciprocating intimacy and use self-revelation to judge and evaluate and disqualify. When we need leaders to LIKE us so that we can “serve” the local body with our gifts and talents, the relationship is fraud. That kind of relationship is exploitation. That kind of relationship is JUST like that shy girl in the back of the car.

Still scandalized?

I know a church where the application process for ministry is as thorough as applying to the CIA. This ministry body is unabashed in their request for personal information:  “If you want to minister here, you must tell us everything you’ve ever done, in writing,” and woe to you if you do a Scooter Libby.

Sometimes the pressure to reveal all is more subtle. Even after five years of relentless pew sitting and “service,” ask to move past the free work and on toward Big Important Spiritual Stuff, something like this will cross a pastor’s lips: “I just don’t think you are on board with our vision. Until we KNOW you better, we will just have to be patient and develop a “Relationship.”

I Got Five Kids Waiting for Me at Home

My Grandmother, well into her 80s, is a beautiful woman; when she was in her late 20s she was a jaw-dropping knockout. (Just trust me on this) She was at a Ballroom Dance event. A dashing dance instructor asked her for a Diet Rite date. (A date where they drink soda not coffee.) Her response: “I’ve got five kids waiting for me at home.” She didn’t have five kids, she had two: a single mother in the 1950s. That dance instructor became her husband for 41 years. She put his casual interest to the test. He rose to the challenge of commitment.

It is time that believers expect the same from their leaders. It is time to vet the level of their relational commitment.

Here is what I suggest. Go up to the Uber Pastor at your church and ask to do something he thinks BIG IMPORTANT SPIRITUAL STUFF–something you need to be “promoted” to do. That big spiritual important thing will usually be preaching to the adults Sunday morning, but if not…think about it a while till you come up with his definition of important. Remember you are not asking to work at the bottom of the JOB totem pole, not lick stamps, not pass the offering plate, or greet at the front door.

Whatever his initial reaction–hilarious embrace or outright rejection–the course of action he will demand next will be based on KNOWING you. He will consider it but he doesn’t KNOW you well enough. Or he will reject you outright because he doesn’t know you.  If he doesn’t toss you out the door, you will eventually hear some variation of you must perform free work so he can have a forum for a “relationship.”

Here is the next crucial step. Here is where you tell him that you have five kids waiting at home. Since free work is the forum for interaction, have a list of tasks at YOUR house that you would be glad to offer him the privilege of serving toward their completion. (Why should his free work be more important, more spiritual than your free work?) As a leader, he should have long since qualified himself with such a standard. So, theoretically, he should be fully equipped with the requisite humility to persist in menial tasks, and therefore participate in your forum for “Relationship.”

Ehem…

Did that not work? Did he hem and haw, and make vague references to his time being important, (as if your time isn’t) or was he unapologetic in saying he needs to be “ministry exclusive?” Hahaha…

Yeah, huh?

Okay…take the free work off the table. Tell him you only have two kids waiting at the house. Tell him you will gladly have a relationship with him: you will bear all if he does. Then ask him about his sex life–favorite positions, number of partners, the last time he looked at porn, his relationship with his wife, how she treats him, is she submitted in the bedroom, or the kitchen, the problems they have, the challenges they have with their children, his bank account and spending habits, tithing habits. In fact, every question he asks, tell him that you will gladly answer any question the he answers fully FIRST.

The content of THIS interaction would at least have the shape of a REAL “Relationship”:  a sense of exchange, and mutual vulnerability, and equal transparency.

Most Church leaders are “relationship” con men, so I suspect you will not get to preach, or do whatever it was HE thought was BIG IMPORTANT SPIRITUAL STUFF. Oh…I know many of them are sincere, but it is long past time for these folks to be evaluated on more than the purity of their intentions. The point of the exercise was to reveal the relational fraud:  a despicable practice that serves one purpose–to evaluate, judge, discredit and disqualify.

Who’s Your Daddy?

Refuse being accepted on leadership terms, defined by them, at their sole discretion. The practice is manipulative and exploitative, despicable, and reprehensible.  The practice is evil and wrong.

Your Daddy has spoken. You have been told: respect yourself, don’t give yourself away, expect commitment, and be cautious with intimacy. When leaders come groping about your soul like they are entitled to your spiritual nudity, you tell ‘em: “My daddy told me not to get in the car with boys like that!”



Broom-Pushing Theology

Sunday March 22, 2009 • 43 Comments 

By John Immel

Here is what I mean by this: follow the metaphor.

You get out of high school and take a JOB at a local factory, or a grocery store, or restaurant. The first day on the JOB, your boss beckons with a finger as he walks towards a large empty floor. He hands you a broom and says: “You got to start somewhere.” After the first hour, you are a master. After the first month, you are desperate to volunteer for any other JOB you can find.

We’ve all been there. I started my working life hauling trash for 5 bucks an hour and all I could eat. I started there for the same reason everybody else starts the world of work–using muscle and brawn; I didn’t have skills much past the very basic:  a pulse body temperature… and if I was really good, I showed up… AWAKE.

This is how we acquired employable ability. This is how we started working. We pushed a broom and built up our employable skills until we got to the big stuff and earned a bunch of money so we could live in a half a million dollar home, buy a luxury car, own a trophy wife, have 3.45 kids, and raise a dog.

We have decided that starting a JOB without skills is the same as GIFTING in the Body of Christ.

Why do we think this? Simple: Uber Church Leaders need free work, so they need a carrot to go with the stick of “Submit to Authority.” It isn’t all that hard to sell folks on the idea that “ministry” starts with lowly service and manufacture a hierarchy of important church occupations. Big Spiritual Stuff is preaching in the big room to the big people, under the lights to 5,000 filled seats. Everything else is less important.

The importance scale is usually a reflection of the Uber Dog’s sensibilities. Whatever those sensibilities are specifically, the presumption remains that you’ve got to start at the bottom, and push a broom to get to the big spiritual stuff.

Here is the tragedy of Broom-Pushing Theology. This operative assumption catastrophically pairs people with JOBS for which they are unGIFTED to perform. It requires people with longstanding professional experience to waste time doing menial tasks that somehow validate their calling. It requires people who have limited or no passion to persist in activities that do not add to their abilities or (even worse) quashes their natural gifting and divine callings for fear of outshining someone else who is comparatively incompetent. Or it puts people in positions they really have NO business doing because we have defined a hierarchy of BIG SPIRITUAL STUFF.

As long as the Uber Preacher has a vested interest in dangling the carrot of “Promotion” to the big leagues in exchange for free work, I suspect that the failure of Broom-Pushing Theology will persist. Or the theology will persist until we all see the true measure of the disaster.

So let’s take a good look at the disaster. Let’s talk about Youth Ministry: the standard bottom ministry position for most aspiring professional ministers. This is where the majority of Senior Pastors start: working in the local youth group. It seems like a logical starting place: just out of Bible College, close in age, still remember what high school was like, and hip to the music and culture of the coming generation.

The freshly-minted bible school graduate has his eye on the stage and the Klieg lights, and a Senior Pastor slot. That slot is already taken unless the college grad thinks he should start his own church and then the Klieg lights are a few year off. The Senior Pastor says that is where he should start: Gotta push the metaphorical spiritual broom for a while. Show your self approved, and wait on tables, and all of that. So by all means: turn ‘em loose on the kids.

Working with kids is a blast. Hanging around 13 to 18-year-olds is like being around a perpetual party, full of all the trivially important anxiety of adolescents. They live tossed and blown by their passions and their frailties: full of life and wide-eyed wonder, full of fear and terrible insecurities.

Oh, the bliss of adolescent drama!

Maybe, as a youth pastor you get paid. But if not, you get to cool concerts, and the theme parks, and camping trips, and the pizza parties. And you get to preach to a captivated audience. Well… maybe a better word is captive: the kids are there because mom or dad sent them there. So IF the kids actually listen, that is a bonus.

If they aren’t listening, >shrug< we aren’t going to do this forever. We are pushing a broom. We are showing ourselves approved. One day we will be before the adoring masses of adults who will appreciate our wisdom. Until then, let’s plan another outing to the theme park. We gotta do stuff the kids like after all.

So, you gain experience with the kids and then you move on to the adults.

Hummm…

Really?

Our Fruity Assumption

By definition, we are sending the LEAST qualified person to teach adolescents. That is a comforting thought. And it is sooo backasswards. Why do we put professional inexperience in the path of those who have the fewest tools deal with incompetence? Said another way…why do we define working with kids the place to start? Said another way…why do we put the least qualified where they can do the most damage?

Adults have a lifetime of experience to deal with bad ideas, bad instruction, and misplaced or ineffective ministry.

(Well, they should, but an overview of modern Christianity puts that assertion to the test.)

Ehemmm…

Kids don’t know a bad idea from a good idea. And that assumes that they have ANY idea, but yet we use them as our testing ground, all because we think someone should push a broom for a while. Everybody starts at the bottom. And our kids are the bottom. That is how we all got a JOB.

We are all under the disastrous, unstated assumption that talking to the grownups in the big room under the lights is BIG IMPORTANT SPIRITUAL STUFF. People get PROMOTED to talk to the significant people.

It is like making it to the Big Show:

“Now batting for Covenant Church USA, after 10 years of hard work in the kiddie leagues, with an Earned Soul Average of 221, Pastor Wanna B. Force.”

The crowd goes wild… Raaayyyyy!   Ohhhh….  Ahhh…

Cynical?

Not, really.

Reality.

The Fruit of Our Fruitiness (AKA the cause and effect of our Outcome)

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.

After raising children in church, parents send them to go to the University with the highest hopes for sound economic futures. The kids are good kids. They have spent their entire young lives listening to God’s word, mostly shielded from bad stuff, fully armed with naïveté to combat the rigor of the big world. They were raised in the “Fear and the Admonition of the Lord,” AKA the endless pizza party youth group: they are sent out as sheep among wolves, harmless as doves and as wise as serpents…ooppsss… no, that isn’t right…as harmless as doves and as wise as doves.

The kids spend a semester at the University. They come back from “Secular” education with their Christian fire dwindling and their vocabulary filled with subtle doubts and vague suspicions. Parents are distressed but not truly frightened. Kids have to sprout their wings after all.

Two academic years pass and the formerly dedicated youth group attendees will not be going to church… anywhere. Parents will start paying regular visits to prayer meetings to win their children back to the Lord. And by year four, the now young adults will have mastered all the academic objections to Christianity that dismantles youth group Christianity like a wet piñata.

Parents will be beside themselves. Their lovely bible-quoting tyke is now quoting Kant and Marx, justifying Cultural Revolution with the insidious ideology of Altruism and spouting frightening agnostic ideologies. (Most Parents will have virtually no ability to talk to their kids on that level–most parents don’t even know what I just said.)

A rift enters the family. The kids think mom and dad are out-of-touch, bible thumping, irrational, stupid zealots: they show them no respect. The Parents think their kids are going to Hell and preach fire and brimstone in a desperate attempt to get their kids back on the straight and narrow.

Unfortunately, there is no punch line to this joke. This happens so often that we assume it is normal. The attrition rate for youth group dropout is so vast that those young men and women who navigate all of their Major University higher education and remain believers is the EXCEPTION.

This is UNCONSCIONABLE. It all stems from our broom-pushing theology.

Christians (and Liberals) ignore the elements of reality with utter disdain. What is the substance of our practice? Conduct a quick survey of Youth group activity for two months. What is the content of “ministry?”

  • A trip to a theme park for another QP doll?
  • A pizza party with pool tables and Xbox?
  • Christian Rock concerts?
  • An annual trip to a Christian version of Woodstock?
  • Some alternative hip dance thing so they don’t have to go to local clubs?

What has your church done to become an adolescent social center?

Don’t answer that. I have too much to say about the customer social service Church; I really don’t want to get started on that.

Anyway…

What does the youth pastor preach? Did the youth pastor prepare them to deal with the rigor of a College Professors systematically dismantling the intellectual foundation of their faith? When the youth pastor does preach, (when he’s not at the party) his top 5 are something like:  “Get serious?”  “Be sold out.”  “Are you Radical for Christ?”  “Don’t listen to Rock Music!” And if all else fails, “Rededicate your life.”

If you have spent any more than about 10 minutes in a youth rally, you’ve heard these sermons preached and preached and preached and preached. The content of the sermon is rather stock. Seriousness, “sold-outness”–is that a word?–radicalness, et al. are always defined by some outward display of adolescent zealotry. Beyond being stunningly vacant sermons, they are really nothing more than heavy-handed head trips for young minds.

What is being “Serious” about Jesus? What is “Sold out-ness”? What is “Radical for Christ”? What body of action do we want to see? What is the ruler of our authentication? What is the outcome that we are trying to extract from these young souls? Are we exhorting kids to sobriety? Focus? Single-mindedness? Temperance?

I have got to laugh. Temperate Adolescence is an oxymoron. Exhorting a teenager to sobriety, focus, and single-mindedness is like asking a man who has not discovered fire to cook dinner.

Does the Broom-Pushing Youth Pastor ever teach how to deal with Immanuel Kant, the single most influential philosopher of the last 200 years, whose intellectual synthesis has infused most every expression of our culture, reducing man to an intellectual automaton?

Does the Broom-Pushing Youth Pastor explain how to refute Marx and the host of Statist/Collectivist heirs populating American social agenda with an onslaught of communism and its subsequent slavery of the Haves to the Have-Nots?

Does the Broom-Pushing Youth Pastor address the hijacked bible ideals by the insidious morality of Altruism that is currently driving the rise of Globalism and justifies every manifestation of bloody Despotism around the globe?

Did the Broom-Pushing Theology Youth Pastor teach Apologetics in preparation for dealing with the rigor of College Professors systematically dismantling the intellectual foundation of their faith?

Did the Broom-Pushing Youth Pastor explain the philosophical underpinnings that EMPOWER a soul to abstain from sex until they have found their mate, match, and partner in life?

Are you kidding?

Most freshly-minted bible school graduates DROPPED OUT of “Secular” University precisely because they couldn’t HANDLE the intellectual rigor of those University Professors. And most freshly-minted bible school graduates don’t even know how to spell Apologetics, let alone know what it is. Most freshly-minted bible school graduates don’t even know themselves the BRAIN work necessary to develop a sexual identity and a corresponding resilient sexual ethic.

Did those broom-pushing bible school graduates teach respect for parents?

That is a tough sermon to give at 22 to 25.

Riddle me this: how does a 22-year-old, freshly-minted bible school graduate explain the concept of respect to a 17-year-old? The 17-year-old knows the 22-year-old youth pastor standing before him is a punk…well, mostly a punk because he’s not that much older. He might be cool. He might be hip. He might relate. He might be fun. But he is a pal, a peer, a buddy. What does he know of respect? He Disses me every Wednesday night youth group when he asks me to pray out loud. You want me to listen to him?  WhatEeeeVER!

If you are one of those freshly-minted bible school graduates–or worse, a bible school DROPOUT in youth ministry–and you are insulted, (not sure why you should be), if you accepted your current position as a way to work up from the bottom…to push a broom for a while, by definition, you are in your current position because you are incompetent. But be released…it isn’t your ENTIRE fault; your Senior Pastor and PARENTS are complicit in the incompetence.

Broom-Pushing Theology is a disaster.

Broom-Pushing Theology is part of the overarching body of teaching that puts MEN in charge of dictating the outworking of other Men’s callings. It gives MEN a carrot to go with their stick of “You will submit to my Authoritaaayy!” because if you don’t, I will never promote you to do what you are really supposed to do.”

As a result, People are catastrophically required to do JOBS they are without GIFTING to accomplish. In the name of Broom-Pushing Theology, people with longstanding professional experience are mandated to waste their time doing menial tasks that somehow validate their calling. It obliges people who have limited or no passion to persist in activities that do not add to their abilities. And, in the name of submission, some of great gifting must quash their natural gifting and divine callings for fear of outshining someone else who is comparatively incompetent.

I will say it until everyone agrees with me.

Acquiring skills for a JOB is vastly different than divine gifts and callings. Who God calls is utterly different than who you pick to work in the Church office. And even a casual reading of God’s prep time with major bible players shows He stuck them in the very jobs their calling was supposed to fulfill.

When Church leaders dangle that carrot of pushing a broom as validation towards further spiritual big stuff, what they are really after is FREE WORK. The carrot they dangle before our face is that someday THEY will let us fulfill our calling IF we sweep the floor in the name of service.

Some of you have been pushing brooms for 20 years. How long are you going to keep doing that all the while the vision and calling is dying on the inside of you?

Maybe you will have this consolation. On that day you will be able to say to God: “I kept the floors clean.”

But don’t be surprised when He says: “People went to hell and remained in bondage in their mind and body because of a little dirt on the floor?”



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