I asked my Uncle Bob (aka RobAC recent and I hope future commenter around these parts), the member of my family I’m most like, to write up a post for my blog. He and I recently reconnected after a long period of being out of touch. It’s really more for my benefit than anyone else’s, but I hope you find it as interesting as I do. And hopefully this won’t be his last guest post around here.

Well Scott, you asked a while ago why I was no longer in full-time ministry after earning a MDiv degree from Duke. The short answer is that I am not a pastor. I did/do not have the skill set required to successfully pastor a church. I will say that I do have certain strengths, e.g. I am a good preacher, I care for people, I love the church. This is not enough.

People are often surprised to find out that I am an extreme introvert, and I do mean extreme. On the Meyers-Briggs Inventory, I could not be any more introverted on their scale. While this is not an insurmountable obstacle, it takes a lot of work to overcome. This surprises a lot of people because I know how to function in public and many would maybe guess that I am introverted, but not to the extent that I am so.

This, perhaps, leads to a related problem; I am not real good at initiating and maintaining “small talk”. I am bright enough and articulate enough to be a great responder. My interests are universal enough that I can converse with almost anyone about something of interest to them, but for the life of me I am at a loss to figure out what those interests may be and how to get to them on my own. Again, I am not totally socially inept, but it is indeed a struggle for me.

Another problem that may not seem a problem on the surface is that I am an idealist. I think that I have a fairly good idea of what the church should be but am impatient with imperfections that I perceive in the local body. A good pastor/leader should not be too far in front of their followers, but I sometimes think that I am not even on the same planet with many in the local church. As an example, I am now working on a book dealing with the Christian’s relation to the state. Most Christians, especially evangelicals with whom I identify, seem to have a serious confusion around Christianity and civil religion. For many it seems, civil religion is Christianity and Christianity is civil religion. Think of church services around Memorial Day and the 4th of July and you may understand my concern here. The church should be the church and the state should be the state and I am not convinced there should be that much over lap, if any. I served mostly small rural churches where it seemed that the US was considered the “promised land” and I have difficulty with this whole ideation.

Another problem that I face(d) is that I am an academic. While I grew up in a lower middle class family in a small town in Illinois among farmers and assorted small business people and have some understanding and much respect for their lives, it is not where I have lived. I have tended to live my life in the world of ideas. I did not want to go to my high school graduation because I knew that it was only a step on my path. I knew that I was going to go to college. When I was at college, I ended up being a Classics major (ancient Greek and Latin) because I knew that I was going to graduate school so that my major did not matter particularly as long as I had the prerequisites for my graduate studies. Most people that I know, if they have gone beyond a high school education, have been much more practical and goal oriented than I. Education and academics for most is a means to an end, I view education and academics as an end in themselves. While I am not totally ivory tower, I am probably only pragmatic enough to get by in this world. This is not a great characteristic for a pastor.

Perhaps the greatest problem for me as a full-time minister is that I am not a political person. Even if we use the term politics in its best sense, and I want to do that with respect to the church (although it isn’t always applicable), there is politics involved and I am not good at playing that game. I understand that where there are two or more people involved there will be politics, but when it gets beyond about two people I start having problems doing the politic thing, whatever it may be. I may usually do the politic thing because it is the right thing to do, but if there is a question of doing what is politic and what is right in my mind, I usually do what I think is right and that can get one into trouble. The real problem is that I usually don’t even recognize the politic thing to do. A serious blind spot if one is to be in leadership for any length of time.

I guess that I would conclude by saying that what a person needs to enjoy success in ministry is at a very minimum an outgoing personality coupled with a sense of being one with the people. A person also needs to be more concerned with the “real”(?) world and accept it as it is to a certain point. While I am convinced that an educated clergy is extremely important, it should probably be tempered by a greater concern for the day to day exigencies of life. While I do not feel that a minister should be a player, he or she should be more attuned to the games people play when they gather together. If you ever need a preacher to challenge you from the pulpit, I am your man, but if you need a pastor you need to look elsewhere.