Peerceptions and misperceptions
02/08/14 05:09
Two conversations yesterday have been replaying in my mind. The first occurred in the grocery store. I was speaking with a repairman who had been working on the machine that dispenses filtered water. The bottles that I was refilling had “Rev Ted” written on them. I often use those words to label various things. I have a vanity license plate on my pickup with those words and some of my tools and other possessions have the words on them to identify them as mine.
“So you’re a reverend, are you?” he asked. “Yes, I am,” I replied. His response was, “I guess that’s OK.” I wasn’t sure how to respond to that statement. I’m not sure what he thought about clergy persons. I guess we are OK to him, perhaps kind of neutral - neither good nor bad. As I was carrying my bottles of wear to the car I decided that he probably knew almost nothing of what it means for me to be a pastor.
Later, in an e-mail exchange with a pastor at an evangelical fundamentalist congregation in our area wrote, “I’m pleased to see that you use biblically-based counseling materials.” Now I have to confess that I have a bit of an elitist attitude toward some of my pastoral colleagues. My denomination considers a four-year undergraduate degree plus a three-year masters degree as the basic requirement for ordination. I have a doctorate in addition to the basic educational requirements. There are plenty of pastors in other denominations who have one or two years at an unaccredited bible college and meet the educational requirements of their denominations. Sometimes it is hard to even have an intelligent conversation about the Bible with some of my colleagues because their biblical knowledge is limited to their own personal reading and a few opinions. They don’t have any knowledge of the original languages and context of the Bible. They don’t know Biblical history. They haven’t studied academic theology. There are people who have participated in Kerygma Bible studies in our congregation who have more basic biblical education that some people who call themselves ministers. This particular colleague has virtually no experience or education in counseling and I was trying to feed him resources that might help him in a very difficult pastoral care situation.
I concluded that my colleague was as ignorant of what kind of pastor I am as was the repairman working on the water filter.
People often don’t know what they’re talking about. And I have found that there are a lot of misperceptions about what I do and what I believe. I remember the first time I walked into the city cafe after coming to be the minister in Hettinger, North Dakota. The cafe had been abuzz with conversations. Ranchers and townspeople were discussing crops and weather and politics and countless other topics. When I walked in, someone said, “There’s the new minister of the Congregational Church,” and the place went silent. No one knew what to say. It was an awkward moment. I grabbed a cup of coffee and looked for someone I had previously met, sat down and asked about his wheat. It didn’t take long before conversations resumed. Within a short time people weren’t even censoring the cuss words out of their conversations, though there wasn’t a lot of cussing in the cafe in the first place. They got to know me. They found out that I wasn’t constantly judging them. They let down their guard and relaxed and got on with their lives.
I have relatives who think that what I do for a living is similar to the televangelists that they see on television. The imagine that I dispense advice to a congregation of people who all dress the same and all behave the same. Preaching seems to be the one thing that they can identify with being a minister. And I do preach. But I rarely dispense advice. I don’t try to tell people what to think, how to vote, or how to act.
And unlike the image of some kind of secular humanist that my colleague thinks is what a minister of the United Church of Christ represents, I have a regular discipline of prayer and study and work hard to apply biblical principles to all that I do. My weekly bible study with other colleagues is academically rigorous and we often exchange books and the names of authors to challenge each other to dig deeper and gain more understanding. My clergy book club stays near to the cutting edge of current theology and biblical interpretation.
The risk, of course, is that I turn around the comments that I heard. It is easy for me to judge the repairman and my colleague. It is easy for me to imagine the realities of their lives in ways that are inaccurate. I had only one conversation with the repairman. Perhaps he is a regular member of a congregation and simply didn’t know what else to say at the moment. Perhaps he was fearful that I might launch into an evangelical diatribe if he said too much. There are a few street evangelists in our community who routinely harass people in the name of Jesus. Perhaps he expected me to say more and to tell him about the congregation that I serve. Perhaps he was looking for a church and wanted to ask more but was somehow hesitant. The truth is that I don’t know the status of his spiritual quest or his place in life’s journey.
And I don’t really know the colleague who made the comment about counseling resources. It is possible that he was already familiar with the resources that I sent. It wouldn’t be difficult to do a Google search on the internet and to turn up some solidly-researched materials alongside of the less solid articles. It is possible that my colleague has an academic background of which I am unaware and knows how to find and incorporate academic research into his work.
It is often the case that when I feel that others are making inaccurate judgments about me, I am in turn making inaccurate judgments about them. Like the cafe in small-town North Dakota, the solution is to get to know one another.
“So you’re a reverend, are you?” he asked. “Yes, I am,” I replied. His response was, “I guess that’s OK.” I wasn’t sure how to respond to that statement. I’m not sure what he thought about clergy persons. I guess we are OK to him, perhaps kind of neutral - neither good nor bad. As I was carrying my bottles of wear to the car I decided that he probably knew almost nothing of what it means for me to be a pastor.
Later, in an e-mail exchange with a pastor at an evangelical fundamentalist congregation in our area wrote, “I’m pleased to see that you use biblically-based counseling materials.” Now I have to confess that I have a bit of an elitist attitude toward some of my pastoral colleagues. My denomination considers a four-year undergraduate degree plus a three-year masters degree as the basic requirement for ordination. I have a doctorate in addition to the basic educational requirements. There are plenty of pastors in other denominations who have one or two years at an unaccredited bible college and meet the educational requirements of their denominations. Sometimes it is hard to even have an intelligent conversation about the Bible with some of my colleagues because their biblical knowledge is limited to their own personal reading and a few opinions. They don’t have any knowledge of the original languages and context of the Bible. They don’t know Biblical history. They haven’t studied academic theology. There are people who have participated in Kerygma Bible studies in our congregation who have more basic biblical education that some people who call themselves ministers. This particular colleague has virtually no experience or education in counseling and I was trying to feed him resources that might help him in a very difficult pastoral care situation.
I concluded that my colleague was as ignorant of what kind of pastor I am as was the repairman working on the water filter.
People often don’t know what they’re talking about. And I have found that there are a lot of misperceptions about what I do and what I believe. I remember the first time I walked into the city cafe after coming to be the minister in Hettinger, North Dakota. The cafe had been abuzz with conversations. Ranchers and townspeople were discussing crops and weather and politics and countless other topics. When I walked in, someone said, “There’s the new minister of the Congregational Church,” and the place went silent. No one knew what to say. It was an awkward moment. I grabbed a cup of coffee and looked for someone I had previously met, sat down and asked about his wheat. It didn’t take long before conversations resumed. Within a short time people weren’t even censoring the cuss words out of their conversations, though there wasn’t a lot of cussing in the cafe in the first place. They got to know me. They found out that I wasn’t constantly judging them. They let down their guard and relaxed and got on with their lives.
I have relatives who think that what I do for a living is similar to the televangelists that they see on television. The imagine that I dispense advice to a congregation of people who all dress the same and all behave the same. Preaching seems to be the one thing that they can identify with being a minister. And I do preach. But I rarely dispense advice. I don’t try to tell people what to think, how to vote, or how to act.
And unlike the image of some kind of secular humanist that my colleague thinks is what a minister of the United Church of Christ represents, I have a regular discipline of prayer and study and work hard to apply biblical principles to all that I do. My weekly bible study with other colleagues is academically rigorous and we often exchange books and the names of authors to challenge each other to dig deeper and gain more understanding. My clergy book club stays near to the cutting edge of current theology and biblical interpretation.
The risk, of course, is that I turn around the comments that I heard. It is easy for me to judge the repairman and my colleague. It is easy for me to imagine the realities of their lives in ways that are inaccurate. I had only one conversation with the repairman. Perhaps he is a regular member of a congregation and simply didn’t know what else to say at the moment. Perhaps he was fearful that I might launch into an evangelical diatribe if he said too much. There are a few street evangelists in our community who routinely harass people in the name of Jesus. Perhaps he expected me to say more and to tell him about the congregation that I serve. Perhaps he was looking for a church and wanted to ask more but was somehow hesitant. The truth is that I don’t know the status of his spiritual quest or his place in life’s journey.
And I don’t really know the colleague who made the comment about counseling resources. It is possible that he was already familiar with the resources that I sent. It wouldn’t be difficult to do a Google search on the internet and to turn up some solidly-researched materials alongside of the less solid articles. It is possible that my colleague has an academic background of which I am unaware and knows how to find and incorporate academic research into his work.
It is often the case that when I feel that others are making inaccurate judgments about me, I am in turn making inaccurate judgments about them. Like the cafe in small-town North Dakota, the solution is to get to know one another.