Collaring Within the Lines: More on Retirement and Things I Would, or Would Not, Do Differently

This is a rather naughty doodle concerning how collar height and the position of one’s neck within it might correspond to one’s title (we Anglicans like our titles) and level of importance in Anglican heirarchy. If one wears the wrap around full collar, the height may also indicate one’s theology. The higher the collar, the more evangelical and low church. The lower, or narrower the collar, the more Romish.

We Anglican clergy do tend to wear clerical collars. Some of us all the time and some not so much. I did at first because I could, I was excited to be newly ordained and I enjoyed the novelty of swanning about in "clericals." I began with tab collared shirts in black, navy and trendy oxford cloth in pale blue.

Then I graduated to the Clericool neckband collar that goes all the way around my neck; like the collars above, only mine were a modest and Anglican via media inch and a half high; like a halo that has slipped, as one wag put it. Tab collar shirts were expensive and stipends were modest, so I started buying my shirts from Value Village for $5 each and Jude, my wife, took the collars off and set them up so I could wear my Clericool neckband clergy collar studded to them. An added bonus was that at Value Village I had a huge selection of colours and patterns. As my more sober dark blue and black shirts wore out, they were were replaced with coloured, patterned ones (see my Full Easter here). Black seemed too funereal. Heavy. I would be "hip" and unique—colourful and cool.

After a while, however, I bought into some adverse ideas about clergy collar wearing; too many negative connotations, some said, nothing but symbols of abusive power, of boring, outmoded Christendom, especially when worn with black shirts. Those who wear them are hiding behind them, some believe. I have to confess I never felt particularly hidden when I was collared. Try walking down the street in one and see how hidden you feel. So my collaredness became less frequent.

For the first half of my ministry I was blessed with some modest growth in the parishes I served which seemed to suggest that God might be liking my only occasionally collared colourful approach.

Here's where I think I went wrong. The shirt colours and not wearing a collar was all about me, about me expressing myself; "Look at him, what a cool clergyman, he's out here with us."

If I was starting out again, I think I would work collared all the time, not because I’m superior, but because of the office I bear. Rather than expressing myself, I need to express The One I serve.

The Right Reverend Kelvin Wright, Bishop of Dunedin, New Zealand (where I once went intending to become a Presbyterian minister and where I met, Jude, my wife, through which The LORD made me an Anglican by marriage—but that’s another story) puts it well in a blog post about wearing vestments during worship:

I don't stand up in front of people in my own right. I do it in the name of the church, which has, for better or worse, decided that I am a suitable person to perform acts of ministry on the church's behalf. And in token of this, I am vested; that is, my own identity is masked. It is hidden within the garments which represent to the congregation the church's history and the Gospel out of which that history has grown. Take, as an example of ministry, the absolution that I pronounce most Sundays. I, obviously, have no ability to forgive anybody's sins. What I do have is the authority to pronounce the truth of God's forgiveness, given by Jesus to the apostles. One of the signs that I am not speaking on my own behalf is the clothing I wear. 

Masks and signs. I think much the same could be said about wearing clergy shirts and clerical collars.

So, for the last few months before I retired, I wore my collar every working day, my own identity symbolically masked and as a sign that I was not speaking or acting on my own behalf.

I'm a recently retired (a whole week!) collarless Anglican cleric. For now.

On Retirement and Things I Would or Would Not Do Differently

As retirement approaches I find myself wondering about what I think I’d do differently if I were starting out again.

One thing I wouldn’t change is being Anglican. I love the way we worship. I love the theatre of it, the drama, the colours, the visuals and the way the divine narrative is covered year after year whether we want to, or not. I love the amount of Bible in it; read out and set to prayer. I love the way it’s always all about Jesus. It picks me up and carries me along no matter how I’m feeling or how engaged I am.

As always, Matt Marino, Episcopal priest in Arizona, puts it well when he describes how Anglican worship works in one of his The Gospel Side blog pieces: To Donald Miller and anyone else considering dumping church: The church works best when you like it least, in which he quotes another Arizona Episcopal priest, Gil Stafford:

The liturgy is like a rock falling into a stream. It rubs the rough edges off of us week after week, year after year. It is an infinitely slow and quiet transformation that is about being with other rocks in the stream as the Spirit works through the years, the prayers, the Sacraments and the community of faith. 

I love it all; the daily offices, the church year, the chanting, the bread and the wine each Sunday. I love the traditional prayer book worship in Shakespearean language and the contemporary rites according to our rather gracelessly entitled Book of Alternative Services. I love the routine, having to resist ennui, the cycle of the church year, the politically incorrect Scripture passages that slip through on Sunday mornings despite attempts to protect our delicate Anglican sensibilities. I love the Englishness of it and having to abide by the pastoral direction of a bishop. I love the way the liturgical system draws me into something much bigger and older than me. I have to serve it. It is not there to serve me and meet my needs.

Marino describes it in a rather lovely Eugene Peterson-esque way, also in the aforementioned post:

It is a long obedience in the same direction. It is about consuming Jesus and being consumed by him. And, I am convinced, the church works specifically best when we do not like it! When we choose to engage and to cooperate with the prayers, and surrender to the Lord of the prayers, and come, kneel, reach out our hands and receive, and “taste and see that the Lord is good,” then we truly worship.

It works best when I don’t like it. It works best when it doesn’t feel as if it’s meeting my needs or feeding me. I like the awkwardness and real-ness of that.

I’m a soon to be retired Anglican priest and I’m okay.

Getting the More Important Done By Doing Less

Another excellent column in Christianity Today—Carolyn Arends on "Hardworking Sloths: Disguising Spiritual Laziness—the lazy culprit behind our busyness."

…spiritual receptivity requires unglamorous practices like prayer, time in Scripture, and attentiveness to what God is doing in the people around me. Telling me, "Prayer promotes spiritual growth!" has as much wow-factor as announcing, "Reducing calories leads to weight loss!" I want something new—a development that will lead to breakthrough. Peterson observes that spiritual disciplines have "not been tried and discarded because [they] didn't work, but tried and found difficult (and more than a little tedious) and so shelved in favor of something or other that could be fit into a busy [person's] schedule."

Scheduling is no small matter. Attending takes time without offering quantifiable results. It requires stillness in a culture that rewards industriousness. It's inefficient in a world that considers getting things done next to godliness. A pastor who refuses to be slothful in the areas of silence and reflection stands a good chance of getting fired.

The wise Peterson to which she refers is, of course, St Eugene.  All here.

And speaking of St Eugene; along the same lines, from Leadership magazine (I'm sorry, I don't know which issue):

A student was telling me he saw a video on Michael Jordan. He said, “Michael Jordan looks so lazy. He looks like he’s not doing anything. Then suddenly, he’s through three people, and he’s slam-dunking the ball.” 

As a pastor, how do you slip through the opposition and make your point? You do it by being lazy—or what looks like being lazy—sitting in your study for half a day reading a book that doesn’t have anything to do with your sermon. 

Consider also The Contemplative Pastor: Returning to the Art of Spiritual Direction, (Word Publishing: 1989)—Peterson on “The Unbusy Pastor” in which describes the scene in Moby Dick when, in pursuit of the whale, the whale-boat is filled with frantic, fierce, straining rowers; a raving, outraged Captain Ahab and someone else:

In this boat, however, there is one man who does nothing. He doesn’t hold an oar; he doesn’t perspire; he doesn’t shout. He is languid in the crash and the cursing. This man is the harpooner, quiet and poised, waiting. And then this sentence: “To ensure the greatest efficiency in the dart, the harpooners of this world must start to their feet out of idleness, and not out of toil.” p33

Just so for we priests and pastors. Peterson suggests the appointment book as the authority for being unbusy: 

The trick, of course, is to get to the calendar before anyone else does. I mark out the times for prayer, for reading, for leisure, for the silence and solitude out of which creative work—prayer, preaching, and listening—can issue. p32

List and Learn

I found two little lists.


Kevin A Miller writing on Pride in Leadership Devotions: Cultivating a Leader's Heart (Tyndale House Publishers, 2001) quotes this list of the "shadows" in leaders' lives from Parker J Palmer from Let Your Life Speak (Jossey-Bass, 1999) : 

1. I am what I do
2. This is war—I must fight and win
3. It all depends on me
4. If we manage everything perfectly, we won't have to deal with chaos and pain
5. Nothing can fail or die on my watch

Can't imagine where he got those ideas!
And this from James McDonald who posits that congregational government is from Satan (H/T Reformissionary):

1. Congregational meetings are forums for division
2. Voting is not biblical
3. Eldership is sometimes unpopular
4. Congregationalism crushes pastors
5. Priesthood, not eldership, of all believers

Sigh. It was a congregational decision that resulted in another forty years in the wilderness after they spied out the promised land in Moses' time.

Available Light: Holy Name

The secret. From a Catholic Priest via the Bishop of Dunedin. Here: Available Light: Holy Name

Redemptive Time Wasting

An excellent reflection on redemptive time wasting by Kelvin, Bishop of Dunedin (where I was still Presbyterian (but drifting), Jude and I met and Kate was born):

I'm aware of the compelling dictates of the stuff that MUST be done, but also increasingly aware of the need to be the sort of pastor described by Eugene H Peterson in his wonderful quaternity of books on pastoral ministry (The Contemplative Pastor, Working the Angles, Under the Unpredictable Plant, Five Smooth Stones for Pastoral Work) : that is, unbusy, subversive and apocalyptic. 

I read another gem from St Eugene in Leadership magazine (a 1998 issue, I think):

A student was telling me he saw a video on Michael Jordan. He said, “Michael Jordan looks so lazy. He looks like he’s not doing anything. Then suddenly, he’s through three people, and he’s slam-dunking the ball.” 

As a pastor, how do you slip through the opposition and make your point? You do it by being lazy—or what looks like being lazy—sitting in your study for half a day reading a book that doesn’t have anything to do with your sermon. 

My first spiritual director, the formidable Sister Una Conran of Calgary's FCJ Centre, called it "mooching." I was to forget my lists and "mooch" in the LORD's presence.

Bishop Kelvin's thoughts also remind me of something I read in Juan Carlos Ortiz's book, Disciple (Creation House: 1975) years ago. Ortiz had built a church from 185 to 600, and was feeling pretty good about himself, when he felt the LORD telling him what he had built was a “business” rather than a church. “You are not growing, you think you are because you’ve gone from 200 to 600. But you’re not growing—you’re just getting fat.” (p85)

The LORD in His mercy impressed a ministry maxim on me not long after I was ordained. Unless the LORD builds the house, I strive and labour, go to bed late and get up early, in vain (Ps 127). If my ministry models workaholism to my people who are already living at a frantic pace, I do not shepherd well.

Thank you, Bishop Kelvin. All here: Available Light: Wasting Time

Eight Things Good Shepherds Do for their Sheep

A good shepherd
1. Spends himself for them. (Jn 10.13)
2. Gets to know them. (Jn 10.14)
3. Feeds them. (Eze 34.3)
4. Strengthens the weak ones.
5. Heals the sick ones.
6. Binds up the ones who are hurt.
7. Brings back the strays.
8. Seeks the lost ones (Eze 34.4)

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

3 Prayers for a Preacher

1. Help me to devote myself to prayer and to the ministry of the word. (Acts 6:4)
2. Enable me to continue to speak your word with all boldness, while you stretch out your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus. (Acts 4:29-30)
3. May the faith of those who hear me not rest on my plausible words of wisdom but on Your demonstration of the Spirit and of power. (1 Cor 2:4-5)

More Limp Leading Reading

Still reading and enjoying Dan B Allender, Leading with a Limp: Take Full Advantage of Your Most Powerful Weakness (Waterbrook Press, 2006). I am to work at being a leader with a limp. That shouldn't be too hard.

"The leader who has fled (like Jonah), faced his cowardice, and then surrendered knows that his place is provisional and that his innate skills or gifts are insufficient for the task at hand (no kidding!). He serves as a privilege, not as a divine right. He is humbled because he knows that many others are more deserving of the position but that somehow, in God's irony, he has been allowed to serve as a leader." p105 (italics mine)

Spike Milliganisms keep coming to mind. He once referred to himself as "a hero with coward's legs." So am I. I've had to screw my courage up on more than one occasion. I've also fled, or tried to. Every since I was ordained I've had the sense that I don't know what I'm doing and I see all kinds of people around me who seem to be doing it better and more successfully. I guess that just means that my "limp" is showing—a good thing according to Allender.

Leading with a Limp

…one of the books I have on the go at the moment. I remember Spike Milligan describing some unfortunate fellow like this: "he walked with a pronounced limp, l - i - m - p, pronounced 'limp'." It was the title, I had to get it. Here's what the leadership limp is: 

Here is God's leadership model: he chooses fools to live foolishly in order to reveal the economy of heaven, which reverses and inverts the wisdom of this world. He calls us to brokenness, not performance; to relationships, not commotion; to grace, not success. (Dan B Allender, Leading with a Limp: Take Full Advantage of Your Most Powerful Weakness (Waterbrook Press, 2006) p55) 

I have to confess that I thought I should be a non-limping, successful, church-growing leader when I was ordained. Almost twenty years on I find that, rather than a "Paul-ish" transformational leader kind of guy, I'm more like one of the guys he left behind to look after things in one of those places we never hear of. I'm more the "quiet man who lives in tents" (Gen 25.27), than I am the hairier, nail-'em-and-bring-'em-in kind of guy. Not that there's anything wrong with that. 

There's been a fair amount of "limpidity" in my leading, methinks. 

On Resurrection Pastoring: Vintage St Eugene Peterson

I just found this in my journal from a few years ago; from an interview with St Eugene in Leadership magazine:

A student was telling me he saw a video on Michael Jordan. He said, “Michael Jordan looks so lazy. He looks like he’s not doing anything. Then suddenly, he’s through three people, and he’s slam-dunking the ball.” 

As a pastor, how do you slip through the opposition and make your point? You do it by being lazy—or what looks like being lazy—sitting in your study for half a day reading a book that doesn’t have anything to do with your sermon. 

Listening, paying attention to people is the most inefficient way to do anything. It’s tedious, and it’s boring, and when you do it, it feels like you’re wasting time and not getting anything done. So when the pressures start to mount, when there are committees to run to and budgets to fix, what’s got to go? Listening to people. Seeing them in their uniqueness, without expecting anything of them. 

You quit paying attention… 

Sometimes I’m with pastors who don’t wander around. They don’t waste time. Their time is too valuable. They run to the tomb, and it’s empty, so they run back. They never see resurrection. Meanwhile, Mary’s wasting time; she’s wandering around. 

Lord, have mercy.


Sorry I don't know what issue of the magazine.

Anglicans Must Change or Die

Sobering words by Steve Weatherbe of canadianchristianity.com. His article focuses on the Diocese of British Columbia's development director, the Rev. Dr. Gary Nicolosi, who calls for the Vancouver Island Anglican diocese to encourage growth by requiring

50 percent of rental incomes be spent on evangelization; by rewarding clergy with higher salaries and more holidays; by training those that don’t grow their parishes – and, if necessary, move them to non-leadership positions, or out of the ministry entirely.

It's not just a BC problem. It's an Anglican Church of Canada, Diocese of Calgary, StB and my problem, too. Lord, have mercy.

All here.

125 Years, Hans Küng, New Horizons and Striking Camp

From Roman Catholic priest and theologian, Hans Küng, The Church, via Readings for Reflection in A Guide to Prayer:

If the Church really sees itself as the people of God, it is obvious that it can never be a static and supra-historical phenomenon, which exists undisturbed by earthly space and historical time. The Church is always and everywhere a living people, gathered together from the peoples of this world and journeying through the midst of time. The Church is essentially en route, on a journey, a pilgrimage. A Church which pitches its tents without looking out constantly for new horizons, which does not continually strike camp, is being untrue to its calling.

A challenge for any parish but especially one like ours celebrating its 125th anniversary in a lovely old (by western Canadian standards) building. Our anniversary slogan is, "Founded on Faith, Focussed on the Future."

Looking Out for New Horizons

This is the window over our altar.

Below is my view of it in the chalice as I preside at the Eucharist Sunday by Sunday. I am blessed to do so in such beautiful surroundings and among such a sweet spirited parish family.

Our stained glass portrays the faith upon which we are founded in beautiful, living colour. The danger, I fear, is that if we're not careful, they, and beautiful things things like them, will block our view of any new horizons to which the Lord is calling us and we will be unable to focus on the future.

Striking Camp

St Barnabas, Medicine Hat: the camp site.

The LORD graces us with his presence here. It is a very comfortable camp site. The food, the water and the company are good. It is a camp which many people do not want to strike. And who can blame them?

On Being a Good Loser

It's in the Cards

Between the eyes again this morning from Evelyn Underhill, A Spiritual Life, in Readings for Reflection in A Guide to Prayer:

Osuna says that God plays a game with the soul called "the loser wins;" a game in which the one who holds the poorest cards does best. 

Not sure who Osuna is; a town in Spain a cursory Googling says.

Toil and Suffering

And Fanny Crosby's hymn, Close to Thee, is the hymn for the week:

Not for ease or worldly pleasure,
Not for fame my prayer shall be;
Gladly will I toil and suffer,
Only let me walk with thee.

I may not be praying for it, but the inclination to ease, pleasure and fame is in there. Toiling and suffering! Well…

Winning by Losing

So Kingdom success is winning by losing.

It brings the Stephen Ministry training material to mind: focus on process, not results. So, if we want to be fishers of men and women, we begin by following Jesus (process). Follow me, he said, and I will make you fishers of men (results).

I know, I know. Some folk in our parish (including my wife) will be saying, "See, see! Don't worry about growth. You can't make it happen. God gives the growth. It says so right in the Bible."

I'm trying. I need Jesus to wield more of that mud I mentioned in the previous post.

More Nouwen and Thoughts on Success

Something in me (my "flesh," I suppose) pushes me to succeed. But the success to which I am so pushed is all about bigger, more and "better." I haven't been very good at that either in my life or my vocation. By worldly standards of success I don't rate very highly.

Then, from Nouwen's Reaching Out via A Guide to Prayer Readings for Reflection, I read this:

But it is important that in this world there remain a few voices crying out that if there is anything to boast of, we should boast of our weakness. Our fulfillment is in offering emptiness, our usefulness in becoming useless, our power in becoming powerless.

A word for me in my striving. And one for conservative Anglicans who aren't feeling very effective or influential but who also feel called to remain in the Anglican Church of Canada.

Nouwen is, of course, referring to this:

But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Cor 12.9-10)

If there is any success, better that it come as a result of that kind of power and strength than anything I can work up.

Underhill on What to Trust When Responding to the Holy Spirit's Call

From Evelyn Underhill, The Spiritual Life, via Readings for Reflection in A Guide to Prayer:

…our own feelings and preferences are very poor guides when it comes to the robust realities and stern demands of the Spirit.

…the spiritual life does not consist in mere individual betterment, or assiduous attention to one's own soul, but in a free and unconditional response to that Spirit's pressure and call, whatever the cost may be. 

So much for "if it feels good and I like it, then God must like it, too."

Nouwen on Success

From Nouwen's, The Wounded Healer via Readings for Reflection in A Guide to Prayer:

…promises, not concrete successes, are the basis of Christian leadership. Many ministers, priests and Christian laymen have become disillusioned, bitter and even hostile when years of hard work bear no fruit, when little change is accomplished. Building a vocation on the expectations of concrete results, however conceived, is like building a house on sand instead of on solid rock, and even takes away the ability to accept successes as free gifts. 

Another hard thing for the likes of me, serving in a declining denomination with the annual meeting looming, to embrace.

And along with this today, 1 Corinthians 1.26-31, on not many of us called being wise or powerful but rather foolish and weak by worldly standards. Nouwen makes it sound like concrete results and success are the exception rather than the rule. When they do happen, there is an implicit challenge to discern very carefully whether it is a free gift or something we've wrought by our own strength.

Prayer For a Guy Trying Too Hard to Make Things Happen

This was one of this week's Readings for Reflection in A Guide to Prayer

Lord, I know not what I ought to ask of thee; thou only knowest what I need…I simply present myself before thee, I open my heart to thee. Behold my needs which I know not myself. Smite, or heal; depress me, or raise me up; I adore all thy purposes without knowing them; I am silent; I offer myself in sacrifice; I yield myself to thee; I would have no other desire than to accomplish thy Will. Teach me to pray. Pray thyself in me. Amen. (Francois Fénelon)

I adore all your purposes without knowing them. Now there's a spiritual discipline.

Not a bad prayer for a guy who has to stay. Sigh.

O, yes.

And, O no! some days.

Boxing Day Thoughts on Pastoring: Blue Mondays, Mistakes and Soul Handling

A couple of things have stuck in my mind from the "Readings for Reflection" in my A Guide to Prayer for this week. 

Blue Mondays

First, from Hannah Whitall Smith's, The Christian's Secret of a Happy Life, this bit spoke to me:

Years ago I came across this sentence in an old book:

Never indulge, at the close of an action, in any self reflective acts of any kind, whether of self congratulation or of self despair. Forget the things that are behind, the moment they are past, leaving them with God.

When the temptation comes, as it mostly does to every worker after the performance of any service, to indulge in these reflections…I turn from them at once and positively refuse to think about my work at all, leaving it with the Lord to overrule my mistakes, and to bless it as he chooses. I believe there would be far fewer "blue Mondays" for ministers of the Gospel than there are now if they would adopt this plan; and I am sure all workers would find their work far less wearing. 

Smith has her detractors, but I think she's right on here and I think it applies not only to Mondays, but also to Christmas and Boxing Days after the Christmas Eve push. What's done is done, what's not done is not done, what didn't work didn't work, what did did, let it be. Trust the Lord to overrule and to bless with divine accuracy.

From My Boxing Days: The TV Version

One of the things I enjoyed about directing live television in my previous life is that once a show was over it was done. There wasn't time to agonize over it because we had to get ready for the next one. I didn't have my mistakes and imperfections recorded for endless playback, regrets and what ifs and I rarely had any feedback from the viewers.

In my work as a priest, Sundays are rather like those live shows except that I see the results (or lack of them) in my congregation playing and replaying week after week and year after year so it's harder to put them behind me.

Best and Strongest Hands

Then there's this from Friedrich von Bodelschwingh (who I can't remember hearing of before):

I beg you, do not look upon Dortmund

or Medicine Hat, or where ever else, methinks,

as a steppingstone, but rather say: Here I shall stay as long as it pleases God; if it be his will, until I die. 

It helps, of course, if you like being where you are.

Look upon every child, your confirmands, every member of the congregation as if you will have to give account for every soul on the day of the Lord Jesus. 

I find that a bit daunting. It's true, I bear some responsibility for the spiritual feeding and welfare of the people I serve, but I also believe that once one is old enough one is responsible for the feeding and welfare of one's own soul.

I like this bit

Every day commit all these human souls from the worst and weakest of hands, namely, your own, into the best and strongest of hands. Then you will be able to carry on your ministry not only without care but also with joy overflowing and joyful hope. 

His best and strongest hands are the hands that save. By his mercy, mine sometimes bring comfort, but can be clumsy and often fumble the ball. Alas.

But then, what Hannah said.

PastorHacks: Busy Pastors... or sinful pastors?

Bob Hyatt's got it right, methinks:

Hilary of Tours diagnosed our pastoral busyness as irreligiosa sollicitudo pro Deo, a blasphemous anxiety to do God's work for him.