My understanding of my job as a pastor is to invite people more deeply into a life of faith. My job is to empower people to serve, witness, give, and engage. My job is to open new doors of learning, to surround people with care, and to create spaces for us all to love our neighbors. It is not my job to tell people what to think or believe. After all I am not in the business of Eilidh, I am in the business of God.
For me part of the way I show up as a pastor is with all my deeply held convictions. I think trans people make excellent pastors. I think love is love is love is love. I have super socialist leaning with dreams of state supported health care and free college for all. I believe abortion is health care and there should be no restrictions. I think we need to radically reexamine capitalism and reevaluate our lifestyles to combat climate change. These stances are all linked to my faith and my theology. This means in my role as pastor I show up with all these thoughts and opinions. And yet I’m clear that I don’t know everything. I can be wrong, I’ve grown and changed over time. I didn’t even used to think about trans folks at all, and now I am lucky enough to love 5 trans folks in our faith community.
One of my favorite things lately has been hanging out under the tree on the front lawn at the Trinity building. One of our leaders comes faithfully to all these gatherings. When he and I have time a lone we talk about it all, climate change, economics, houselessness, the election, states rights, abortion, and more. While in lots of ways we differ I have learned so much from our conversations and I know he has too. I don’t hide my theology or my stances from him and that enables us to have such rich interactions. We can do this because we respect and love each other. And he knows that just because I’m his pastor my thoughts and opinions aren’t inherently more holy or worthwhile than his. We can meet as equals in a loving exchange of ideas and thoughts.
I saw something the other day that said we can disagree about pizza toppings and stay friends, but we can’t disagree about human rights and be friends. Our churchy way of saying this is in the essentials unity and in all else grace. Our essentials as a faith community are love, respect, a willingness to grow, and a commitment to faith in action. I have asked people to leave events when they became abusive or toxic. I have told church members they can’t call people slurs or other names. I have set boundaries not abut differing beliefs or thoughts, but about how people show up in anger, forgetting that others are beloved children of God. We are a parish that welcomes LGBTQ+ folks and celebrates them in leadership. We are committed to loving our neighbors through sharing what we have in a multitude of ways. We follow science and so aren’t reopening our doors for in person gatherings any time soon as another way of loving our neighbors and living out our faith.
I know so many pastors who hide their thoughts and ideas from their church folks because they want to stay neutral and pastor everyone. For me and this parish being who we are, sharing what we think, and learning from each other is the better path. Again my job is not to be the final word on God, on faithfulness, or on ideas, but to invite people into the amazing, beautiful work of living theological and experience God in all things.
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