Grace not Perfection

One of the purposes of taking this year off from school was to give me time to complete the candidacy process to become a pastor with the ELCA. There were two initial goals here. One, I wanted to gain real life ministry experience that can simply not be gained in a classroom. This experience will hopefully serve as part of the discernment process for me and give me a chance to fully explore some of my ministry options. Second, there is a lot of paperwork and interviews and such that goes into becoming a pastor and it was simply more than I could complete during my senior year of college (though I have a new respect for those who did complete it during that time).

It turns out that the ELCA does not just allow anyone with a Masters of Divinity become a pastor. I suppose that’s for the best and there is certainly good reason to ensure that modern pastors will actually be able to care for their church and community. Nonetheless, there is a lot of work that has to be done before I even begin seminary. I have already completed a four-page application with an attached six-page essay. I completed a twenty-five page psychological autobiography and health questionnaire and took numerous personality profiles and tests. My most recent experience culminated the psychological portion of my evaluation process.

Last week I spent three full days (essentially from 9-5 on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday) at the Midwest Ministry Development office as part of the group Group Candidate Program. What does that mean? Well that is an excellent question. And since you are still reading at this point I am operating under the assumption that you want to know. The Group Candidate Program is an evaluation that is designed to 1) save various churches money by doing a group process rather than individual and 2) allow for group interaction as part of the learning process. Since that doesn’t actually answer your question, I spent three days looking at who I was and how that fit into my picture of what my ministry was. I did this with five other future seminarians (3 other Lutherans at 2 United Church of Christ). We looked in depth at our Myers-Briggs tests as well as the Wagner Enneagram Personality Styles Scale (I really just like to say that one fast so it sounds more impressive). These allowed the group to look at how we interact with other people and offer feedback to one another on how this may positively or negatively affect our ministries.

The psychology major in me actually enjoyed most of it. The masochist in me particularly enjoyed the opportunity to take the MMPI-2 (Minnesota Multi-Phasic Inventory- Second Version, another fun one to say quickly and impressively). The MMPI is composed of 567 true or false questions. It seems simple enough until you are about an hour and a half in and you realize you still aren’t done. Typically the MMPI is used in clinical assessment to determine what, if any, psychological concerns the subject may have. If you have ever been psychologically evaluated for a court trial you would have taken the MMPI. It allows psychologists to test for depression, psychosis, phobia, mania, delusions, and a wide array of other concerns. It also contains validity scales that allow psychologists to see if the subject is lying, exaggerating, or underplaying their symptoms. It is all very statistical and I don’t know exactly how it works. Anyway, after 2 hours of testing and an hour session with a psychologist it turns out that I’m not crazy. In fact, despite my sister’s opinion, it may even be said, especially by a psychologist that was evaluating me, that I’m a “well-adjusted young adult.”

I have since had some time to reflect on this and the importance of this process. This psychological evaluation comes as a burden to many who are going through the candidacy process. I heard a number of horror stories going into the process that made me fairly nervous about the whole thing. Pastors who said that their words were misinterpreted to mean things that they didn’t intend or that the counselors were just digging for issues where there weren’t any. I don’t doubt that their experiences were legitimate. Perhaps the process has changed since their day. Certainly there are at least new counselors working here. Nonetheless, I think it is important that we as future pastors take the time to evaluate our own lives past and present.

Pastors do not need to be perfect, praise God. If we expected perfection we wouldn’t have any pastors left. But pastors should be in-tune with themselves and their own experiences. If a pastor is unaware of their tendency to be overly extraverted then they may actually be scaring people off without knowing it. A more serious example would be a pastor that went through a divorce without really dealing with and understanding their emotions and experiences attached to that. How would this pastor be expected to counsel a couple going through marital problems or even a couple looking to get married? Divorce, or other tragic experiences, should not exclude anyone from the candidacy process but it is important that we seek healing and understanding in our own lives before we try to pass that healing and understanding on to others.

Christ does not demand perfection. While we were still sinners he died for us (Romans 5:8). And it is by grace, not our own works, that we are saved through faith and this is a gift from God (Ephesians 2:8-10). But to serve God’s people we must serve ourselves. The ever famous, though perhaps clichéd, analogy of a cup comes to mind. We, if you imagine our lives as cups, have a limited amount of water to pour out. Worse yet if our water is tainted by our own lives we will simply be pouring tainted water out to the children. But Jesus says in John that he is the living water that does not end and whoever drinks of it will never thirst (John 4). When we focus our lives in the grace and forgiveness of God we are overfilled with pure clean water that runs to all of those around us. This is the call for pastors, and frankly all children of God. Not perfection, but an awareness of our own brokenness and a dependence of the forgiveness and strength of God! In this we will serve His Kingdom through the works of our hands. For if we focus ourselves on his grace how can we stop from showing this grace to those who need it most.