Ministry Matters: Buzz Stevens

BLOG: Playing Nice with Power-Play Parishioners

Wed, 27 Jun 2012 18:48:49 GMT

By Buzz Stevens

After picking up a seemingly pleasant parishioner on the way to my first finance meeting in my first church, all hell broke loose on the drive. She asked “Why is your wife not attending the meeting?”

“She’s busy grading papers for her school work,” I said.

“So what?" The woman responded. "She should be coming to the meeting.”

“No,” I replied and half-way pleaded. “She really has to be home tonight.”

My crazed passenger reached over, pulled at the steering wheel and shouted angrily “Nope, we’re going back for her!” We nearly slammed into a curb.

I suppressed my anger, smiled, took her hands off the wheel and exclaimed “No, it’s just you and me on this run, ma’am!” She backed off, but she was fuming and managed to sustain her volatile demeanor.

A year later we talked about that unpleasant night. There was no apology. She grinned and said “You were more than angry and on the verge of rage that night, but you swallowed it and came across politely. I would contend you were a complete hypocrite in those moments.”

Two of my predecessors had warned me about her power plays. She remained that sweet for the duration of my stay there.

I swore I would never cave in to members who appeared to enjoy taking such heavy-handed shots at me or anyone else in my congregations.

Three former pastors forewarned me regarding a long-time treasurer in my second assignment. During the first year on the job, her demanding conduct managed to impact my heart, stomach and intestines. I went through a bottle of antacids every month. I learned when she got angry at preachers in the past, she withheld their paychecks for two or three days. No one messed with her, laity or clergy. She continued to be a pain in the bowels until an incident occurred that cut into some of her absolute power.

Over a two-month period the deposits at the bank were low and not matching the monthly church tally. We had only one depositor and we should have had two. Our treasurer began to suspect the lay person making the bank runs was probably on the take. She was incensed, pointed at the alleged accused across the patio after services one day, and started lambasting him in front of dozens of shocked members. Two people tried to calm her down but she wouldn’t cease berating him.

My innards were in a knot again as I stood watching the episode. I finally rushed at her in flying pastoral robe and stole, grabbed her arm and marched her away, while whispering a little too loudly “Stop it! I want to see you in my office right now!”

When I closed the door I just looked at her. Before I could speak she declared “No preacher—well, nobody for that matter—has ever come at me like you did just now. It must have been difficult for you to do what you did because you’re shaking and truly disgusted. What took you so long?”

I was stunned and a little teary-eyed. Her eyes clouded up. We hugged and became friends. Well, not pals, but we did okay with each other after that. Did I dread hurting her feelings? Not as much as I feared possibly losing my job. It turned out the two fiscal short-falls were due to bank oversights.

I learned later a couple of church members were offended by my abrupt behavior that day. Several commented “It’s about time.” One guy alluded to my swift approach with fluttering robe and flapping red stole as a Superman-type character coming in from another planet.

How often do we pastors repress our deepest, most candid emotions in a temple and how much of it is detected by our laity? How long do we have to suffer physically and mentally through such harassment? Is it assumed a preacher has to bury her anger and rage until retirement? Does it ultimately matter if we hold back or expose it? Can there ever be such a thing as suitable clergy rage allowed inside churches?

Mark Twain suggested “When angry, count four; when very angry, swear.” I would propose when enraged, count ten and explode if necessary. . . . We’ll likely live longer.

BLOG: Enemy-Loving Candidates

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 17:46:51 GMT

By Buzz Stevens

Presidential candidates often get asked questions checking whether they oppose the right people or ideas and if they oppose them enough. Socialism? Check. Illegal immigrants? Check. Iran? Check. The theme seems to be "if you hate the same things I hate, I'll vote for you."

I think candidates who claim to be Christian need to be asked how they intend to love their enemies. I have always wondered why they’ve never been pressed to answer up to that specific edict. How, for example, would they express their compassion in a tangible way? Candidates who consider themselves followers of Christ in present and past campaigns have evidently not volunteered to offer an explanation perhaps because they’ve never been asked to do so. They’ve had a free pass. We expect our leaders (especially if they claim the Christian label) to uphold certain standards of morality and religiosity, but are heads of state exempt from this particular command of Christ?

Here’s the good news. The Jesus seminar, those brilliant biblical scholars who have spent decades analyzing every verse in the scriptures contend Jesus never uttered “Love your neighbor.” It turns out the phrase comes right out of the Old Testament. But they’re pretty certain he did proclaim “Love your enemies.” So, candidates are not necessarily under the gun to have to love their next door neighbors but they’re not off the hook when it comes to loving their enemies.

Here’s the other good news, Jesus evidently didn’t specify how long we have to love our foes. What if it’s possible to plunge to unconditional enemy-loving once in the span of a couple of hours—just long enough to talk face-to-face and see political rivals and enemy nations as fellow human beings? What if state officials only had to give it a shot and be assured they could walk away forever from their adversaries after a brief, honest, vulnerable, deep-seated, unconditional bonding experience?

Presidents of any religion seem to put more energy into not revealing their deepest and most candid feelings while in office. Ralph Keyes, in his book, The Courage to Write: How Writers Transcend Fear, states, “As president, Ike (Eisenhower) made an art form of syntax. This was no accident. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said when press secretary James Haggerty expressed concern about a ticklish question that might be asked at a press conference. ‘If it comes up, I’ll confuse them.’”

Keyes goes on to suggest that “We’re all born with an ability to get our message across. The ability to baffle is acquired. . . . Saying exactly what we mean can be risky. That’s why we so seldom do” (p. 100).

When I came across that last quote, naturally I immediately thought of the single encounter theme with which I’ve been obsessed in my writings. What if national leaders were required to love their enemies one time in some concrete way? What if they had to unload their inner-most feelings with each other? How would they go about that?

Even presidents possess those tricky inner drives that can get them to love deeply and/or get them into deep trouble. What if gutsy heads of state—the ‘good’ guys and the ‘bad’ guys—risked revealing within a two-hour condensed encounter their deepest feelings of compassion, anger, rage, fears and lust in their lives. What would it be like for presidents—whether they’re tyrants or dictators, democratically grounded or otherwise—to mutually open up with their enemies on what’s deep inside them? Vulnerability is an antidote to hostility. When we reveal who we truly are in moments of all-out truth-telling, we can hardly act tough and aren't likely to be in the mood to spit, scratch, cuss, or bear arms.

BLOG: The Honesty of Single Encounters

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 14:43:47 GMT

By Buzz Stevens

Robert Trivers suggests in his book The Folly of Fools that deceit is a ‘deep feature’ of life, a condition that is quite possibly exacerbated by our brutal genes. Pretense may be necessary to enable us to sustain lengthy love bonds but it’s likely we are built to disclose our deepest deceptions to total strangers. It may be too big of a stretch to accept where I’m going with these thoughts, but it’s likely we are capable of revealing our most profound hidden feelings to strangers or acquaintances when we are certain we will never have to enter their lives at that level again.

I realized after a few months serving as a chaplain on the Skid Row streets of L.A. that in-depth emotional plunges occurred when I ceased trying to establish long-term relationships. After that three-year stint, I began risking opening up to seat partners on flights and park benches and learned we creatures are capable of divulging our deepest fears, anger, and love feelings to total strangers. I’ve had people reveal within a span of two hours that they loved unconditionally their family members and some who hated a spouse, a parent, child, friend, co-worker, or boss and had never let that sentiment out.

Most every stranger with whom I ran deep admitted they would never reveal these things to a loved one or friend. I believe that is partly due to the fact if we did and were to be rejected we would be devastated beyond repair, an irrational fear perhaps but one that keeps our deceit going. We may be genetically designed to relate that deeply with strangers. The interaction may be more natural and candid than what we experience in cherished, guarded, long-term friendships, partnerships or marriage bonds.

I gave up on requiring two counseling sessions for couples planning to be married and instead advised—no, make that ‘warned’—that there would be only one session. I promised them we would never meet again beyond the wedding and that everything would remain confidential. I assured them I would be totally frank about my own life, marriage, sex, in-laws, money, and children if they were willing to be completely honest about their relationship and those of their parents and friends.

I had a couple of brides admit they hated their fathers and decided in the sessions that they would not be allowed to walk them down the aisle. More than a few couples confessed to hating their future in-laws and several were working hard on getting to like or love their step-children. The single sessions were just as threatening for me as they were for the couples. The meetings were intense with occasional explosive outbursts but we always ended on an affirming note. I’ve also counseled elderly spouses in one-shot sessions, with the promise we would not meet on the matter again, who admitted they came to despise their mates in their demanding and cantankerous declining years. Such revelations can cause deceitful lovers to feel healthy for a time. It may be just enough to keep them sane.

Single-encounter bonding with strangers certainly differs from conventional therapeutic practices. Psychologists are pretty much required to rely on their reasoning faculties over an extended time period and refrain from revealing to clients their own deep-seated feelings comprised of candidness, tenderness and affection. The reciprocal factor is essential for sparking instant unconditional intimacy. One-shot intimate conversations can generate immediate risky openness, tenderness, and affection. Perhaps in the future, there will be no call for counselors-for-hire to help us cope with our guarded, natural sentiments. Their services can be given to more chronic cranial conditions.

When we experience a sudden loss, whether a divorce or a death, we’re abruptly deprived of deep intimacy or at least some form of compassion. It’s a crucial short window of time when we might crave instant openness, tenderness, and affection more than ever and it’s doubtful a therapist can provide that kind of emotional support in swift fashion. We might need to deal with the deceit we were holding back from loved ones minutes after a loss. I’ve discovered that mourners often stay distant from friends, congregational members, and even family members for days, weeks, or months after a separation or a death, afraid to confess feelings they had harbored for years. Those in grief may do well to head right away for Starbucks or a mall bench to unload on an unsuspecting stranger who might also have suffered a recent loss.

Resolving our grief and deceptiveness in short order will not be the most crucial aspects of such novel undertakings. Recent pediatric scientific studies have revealed what is referred to as “toxic stress,” a form of chronic abuse induced by parents whether by neglect or threats that seriously disrupts the brain chemistry of offspring from birth to early childhood. In later years they might become extremely aggressive and volatile. We may inadvertently bump into a distraught stranger bent on taking his life or that of another. A sudden and profound intimate connection might cause one who has never experienced unconditional compassion with family members or friends to feel twice about committing a violent deed.

What if single encounters with strangers were to become a social model for cultures, and millions of intimacy pursuers roamed the planet? What if adversarial nations were to permit or welcome single-encounter activists with no political or religious agendas to venture onto their turf? It could be that safe-but-daring single bonds on planes and park benches are the first-stage efforts that will prepare us for risking our welfare on hostile ground, nurturing peace not just in our own souls but among people everywhere.

BLOG: Is Morality Taught or Inborn?

Sun, 18 Sep 2011 15:47:17 GMT

By Buzz Stevens

“Two things fill my mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe: …the starry skies above me and the moral law within me.” - Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, 1788.

David Brooks had an interesting column in the New York Times last week about the findings of sociologist Christian Smith's research study of young people’s moral values. Brooks is discouraged over the subjects' confessions that they give little thought to moral decisions. Brooks summarizes Smith's conclusions (outlined in the new book, Lost in Transition: The Dark Side of Emerging Adulthood) saying, "you see the young people groping to say anything sensible on these matters. But they just don’t have the categories or vocabulary to do so."

As one participant admitted, “I would do what I thought made me happy or how I felt. I have no other way of knowing what to do but how I internally feel.” To me that’s a telling sign. He didn’t convey that he merely thinks about such matters.

The researchers contend they “found an atmosphere of extreme moral individualism . . . they’ve not been given the resources – by schools, institutions and families – to cultivate their moral obligations.”

Brooks maintains “Many of these shortcomings will sort themselves out as these youngsters get married, have kids, enter a profession or fit into more clearly defined social roles.”

Will they? Is that how we learn morals these days? I might have been partially affected by families, institutions, and cultural codes of conduct, but I’m not sure I wrestled significantly with ethical concerns until I entered into deep conversation with individuals who were candid and somewhat vulnerable about how they honestly feel about a moral issue. (People who perhaps had the "vocabulary" Smith says many young people today lack.) I didn’t get much help at home or in schools as far as I can remember. My parents, teachers, and mentors mainly modeled for me how to think about my fears, anger, and lust, but there was little if any mutual sharing of deep feelings. Come to think of it, the topic of lust got skipped.

Brooks ends on a hopeful note from my perspective. He states “Morality was once revealed, inherited, and shared, but now it’s thought of as something that emerges in the privacy of your own heart.” I assume he’s referring to what we inherit from our families, faith communities, and culture. From my view, Brooks relies too heavily on the influence of familial and communal nurturing and not enough on what we might have stored within us as individuals.

In general, Smith found that his young subjects did not seem to be less moral than adolescents of other times (adolescence being a time of risky behavior and short-sighted decision-making in general), so perhaps reliance on an inate, God-given sense of right and wrong isn't necessarily so inferior to the more cognitive passing on of rules and values.

Two other research findings can also speak to how we deal with moral matters. I may be putting too much stock in them, but scientists are making a case that early primates come equipped with a moral compass. Marc Hauser, an evolutionary biologist suggests in his book Moral Minds “that the brain has a genetically shaped mechanism for acquiring moral rules, a universal moral grammar similar to the neural machinery for learning language.” In addition, neuroscientists suggest that the risk to trust immediately is “probably augmenting an extremely rich model (we) come equipped with.” (Source: "A Study of Social Interactions Starts with a Test of Trust," by Henry Fountain.)

The first finding supports what is often known as "natural moral law" and discussed by Paul in Romans 1-2. The latter findings offer the promise that there will be individuals out there, maybe total strangers, willing and able to risk running deep with us in an instant, sparking the conversations that enhance our moral thinking as we learn to articulate the inate moral feelings within us.

BLOG: Frank Discussions

Tue, 23 Aug 2011 13:56:21 GMT

By Buzz Stevens

“Words not only affect us temporarily; they change us, they socialize or unsocialize us.”
- David Reisman, The Lonely Crowd, 1950

My wife and I were invited to join two fun-loving couples for a three-day houseboat venture in northern California. The host/owner turned out to be quite conservative on nearly every controversial issue (whereas I am not). He was physically and intellectually daunting while addressing topics such as gun control and government vs. faith community networking for the poor.

I managed to bond with him early on apart from others when he revealed some personal struggles. We both opened up and became vulnerable while confessing similar conflicts in our lives.

The combative arguments between two more liberal guests and ‘Frank' (that works well for a pseudonym because he was more than frank in our encounter) didn’t surface until the final night. There were moments when some of us thought he might be tempted to kick us off his boat. What I noticed by holding back from joining in on the fray at the outset was the way the views were espoused. Each counterpart seemed to have an impressive yet immediate response after making a point but the exchanges eventually lapsed into a mode of reason-to-reason resistance. Most of us quarrel that way on ardent issues and I’ll admit I’m guilty of it too. I was eager to jump in with my colleagues to counter Frank's positions. Frankly, I envied the passion they expressed.

When I was asked by a liberal cohort to weigh in on the exchange, I was reluctant, possibly because I felt for Frank. I didn’t feel sorry for him; he was sharp and articulate and holding his own with his views. We had befriended each other at a level of compassion that mattered to us so I refrained from countering his views. When I finally entered into the dialogue and espoused views similar to my colleagues, Frank wavered, backed off a bit, and was silent before making each response. He may have caught that I was hesitant to launch into an argument with him. It’s a subtle and perhaps a minor observation but given my obsession with the need to run deep with strangers, I’ll take it.

I believe that engaging deeply with adversaries prior to a heated discussion, no matter how brief, could provide a fleeting break from our reasoning faculties. That might be the missing piece in congressional arguments of late. There may be no risky bonding going on between individuals outside the sessions. A recent article on the rigid mood of congress members disclosed that few legislators bring their families to D.C. these days. My hunch is families would mainly support and reinforce the views of their loved ones.

When I first met Frank, he came across as a physically imposing, impulsive, shirtless character with a bushy cowboy-like mustache. Have you ever met a stranger and felt in the moment you’d likely not want him in your life? Well that was my first instinct in meeting the boat man. It’s probably a guy thing or maybe it’s just my thing.

But the first time we had a chance to be alone, Frank opened up to me about his personal life and admitted later he did so because I was a minister. After revealing my personal stuff, he confessed I didn’t seem like a pastor. I get that a lot. Within two hours we were sharing at a depth that might have taken several sessions to get to in a counselor’s office.

Our last night out, the big issue that erupted among the guests was over the issue of gun control.

In our brief confidential bond he had revealed with some palpable emotion how much he loved his kids. When I reflected later on why I was hesitant to jump in on the heated gun control discussion between Frank and two other guests, it struck me he might have genuinely feared for his family’s safety if he were forced to give up his weapons. Within that awkward pause, I also recalled the times I went quail hunting with my dad in the Mohave Desert as a kid. My dad was a passionate and proud member of the NRA. Those outings were the best times I ever had with my father. However, I gave up my firearms in my young fatherhood days when I learned of a five-year old who killed his two-year old brother with his dad’s handgun.

Maybe Frank was prepared to argue intellectually with me when I started to come at him on the issue but shifted gears when he sensed in my halting sentiments I was attempting to honor our short-lived union. We had evidently experienced a level of trust that allowed us to not only hear each other's views but feel each other's concerns. I don’t recall ever experiencing such a disruption while discussing controversial matters. We seemed to have given up needing to win the debate by communicating to each other that we were not sure how the heated discourse might turn out. That’s when we can manage to sustain a vibrant, healthy debate. We don’t get there by repressing our deepest source of empathy in the midst of an interchange.

We guests had great fun with Frank. We had a difficult time parting company and promised each other we would stay in touch. But I’ve learned after bonding intensely with strangers it’s hard to re-enter that vulnerable cherished zone. If we’re built to love strangers unconditionally in a first meeting then perhaps we don’t have time to sustain lengthy relationships. Henry Adams may have been a single encounter kind of guy when he mused “One friend in a lifetime is much; two are many; three are hardly possible.”

BLOG: Can Pastors Swear?

Mon, 06 Jun 2011 14:39:39 GMT

By Buzz Stevens

I recently watched a few segments of the TV reality show, “Kitchen Nightmares.” Chef extraordinaire Gordon Ramsay travels the world jump-starting struggling high-class restaurants. It's an extremely intense process in which he comes at the entire kitchen crew and doesn't hold back in confronting them. The participants know they have to take the ranting and raving from him because their businesses could go under if they don't accept his severe evaluations. I found it fascinating because he manages to elicit extreme levels of emotion, such as profound compassion, fear, anger, and near rage from the crew. He draws out a whole range of feelings, including tears, by having them meet in the late night hours or predawn when they're exhausted and vulnerable.

I imagined him processing staffs of dying churches, which might be the help some congregations need, but the guy gets angry and cusses big time. He would likely be ousted after the first blasphemous outburst! And we all know you can't spout expletives in church, right? . . . Right?

Before my retirement, some of my most frightening recurring nightmares had me at my last church and I'm unable to stop preaching in the first worship service of the day. The sermon goes on and on until members begin pointing at their watches and then shaking them at me. Eventually they start leaving the sanctuary, but I can't stop. The nightmares got worse on occasion when a pew sitter would jump up and shout “Shut up, dammit! You've rambled for over two hours,” and I holler back, “Go to hell!”

If a preacher doesn't happen to believe in hell, could he get away with such a disturbing outburst in the light of day while wide awake? In times past he would likely be out of work by the following day. We clergy can refer to the term 'hell' in the pulpit in a biblical context but we just can't utter it on the job when we're at our wit's end.

How far can pastors push the envelope when it comes to using controversial expletives without losing their jobs? I never did it but I always wanted to ask my congregations if it's ever okay for ordained ministers to cut loose with curses on church property when they are boiling over with anger. Where does such intense clergy ire go when it isn't released on the church site? I'll tell you where it might burst out . . . in the preacher's parsonage. The first word emitted by our firstborn was a distinct “Dammit!” How did she ever come up with that? We lived next door to a Presbyterian pastor who hated mowing his lawn and let it be known . . . but I don’t think that was it.

I can't count the times I held back in my decades of ministry from letting out a choice curse at a contentious meeting, or when things went really badly behind the scenes between services, or during them for that matter. There were a few mean-spirited members throughout my tenure whom I felt should have been cursed at but I resisted the impulse. My hunch is they knew I was aching to cuss them out and they were likely aware they deserved it.

I recall a time when I served as an associate pastor in a large church. The first week on the job, I was assigned to record prayers for the phone ministry. The senior pastor wanted two-minute messages, no more and no less. It had to be exact for some reason. While working one late night in a sound booth above the sanctuary I was tired and on my tenth try to record this perfect message when I lost it and screamed “Dammit!” I stepped out of the booth around 11 pm thinking I finally nailed it and headed home. Once home, I decided to call and listen to the prayer. It was near perfect until it ended with an emphatic “Dammit!” and I may have referred to Jesus somewhere in there. The church was a good 40-minute drive from my home and I made it in 25, but not before a distraught parishioner managed to call in for a much-needed prayer. The next day the senior pastor removed the responsibility for that particular task from my job description

I think passionate pastors and lay leaders ought to be permitted to cut loose with profane exclamations occasionally inside their temples or at least on the patios. What if by suppressing the urges to vent the stress escalates, heart muscles are compromised a bit and the damage cuts off about one or two years of one's life? Could it be we're built to swear at times and if we fail to express our fair share of expletives bad things can happen to our bodies? Perhaps the need to vent never leaves us; it just gets stuck in our stomach or brain for all time if we hold back.

Maybe that’s why clergy are generally in such poor health.

What do you think?

BLOG: Going Deeper

Mon, 30 May 2011 13:18:44 GMT

By Buzz Stevens

For some reason I have an odd need to reveal what I’m thinking and feeling on the spot with most anyone. The older I get, the more I tend to risk "going there" with people, whether friends, relatives or total strangers. The urge has become a sense of urgency in my old age; idle chatter is becoming increasingly painful.

Just last night, I stepped outside at about 10:30, looked at the house next door and the one directly across the street and wondered why I didn’t truly know the inhabitants. I know one guy’s name is Charlie and the other is Joe. We’ve lived within a hundred feet of each other for over twenty years and I have no idea what goes on inside their minds and hearts, their deepest fears and highest hopes. Does it matter one way or the other that we merely wave, nod, or chatter for a few seconds about twice a year? The older I get the more I think about such bizarre things. Do I merely have a need to get in on some gossip? Could be, but I don’t know what I’d do with it because the rest of the residents on our block probably wouldn’t give a rip about most neighborhood hearsay.

Before I began going to church, and certainly before becoming a pastor, I assumed members would be open to readily sharing their honest feelings. The notion may have been influenced by Holden Caulfield, the young character in Salinger’s book Catcher in the Rye. The publication came out in the early 1950s, around the time I began attending churches. Holden criticizes his fellow students and faculty members at his prep school for being superficial, or, as he bluntly put it, “phony.” My first impression of church life was that it didn’t seem a whole lot different than neighborhood life; one step from waving and chattering, and mostly “phony.”

But then I assumed as a pastor I had the right and the responsibility to ask parishioners about their deepest fears and highest hopes. Well, at least that’s what I thought my official position permitted. I had impertinent church members challenge me on occasion with “Are you allowed to ask me that?” and I’d reply, “Only God and I will know.” Very few countered “I’m not worried about God knowing.”

Take premarital counseling sessions, for instance. In my early years of ministry I was pretty safe and proper in those settings but in time I realized that, not unlike those hapless pew sitters who were held hostage on Sabbath morns, the clueless nuptial duo knew not what they were in for.

After some pleasant small talk in a session; I wouldn’t call it chatter, I’d ask them to tell me why they chose each other. The male types stumbled and gave it their best shot but the brides-to-be often beamed while addressing their intended. When I sensed they were beginning to feel relatively comfortable with me I would ask bluntly “OK, now let’s reveal what you don’t like about each other and what you might hate.” The guys always seemed to want to go first. If I felt they were up for it I would then ask “Now tell me and each other your deepest secrets and fears.” Gasps and recoils by both followed by awkward silence and disbelief.

“Do we have to answer that?”

“I have a right to ask; it’s part of my job description,” I’d fib, but they never asked for verification.

A retired pastor told me about the time an elderly church member called him to say her dying husband wished to speak to him at their home. His wife showed him the way to the bedroom and mentioned her husband wanted to see the pastor alone. The feeble patient confessed “We’ve been married for nearly fifty years and I have never loved that woman!” He evidently died peacefully. We need to have a chance to talk turkey up front.

I do believe Holden Caulfield would have wanted to be present in those counseling sessions when tears began to flow and deep fears were divulged mixed with profound love feelings. The confessions may have had to do with anger toward parents, siblings, God, a boss, each other and sheer fear of the future. By the time we finished such sessions I felt right with the universe and I think many of the couples felt the same.

BLOG: Emotional Genius

Tue, 03 May 2011 21:23:55 GMT

By Buzz Stevens

I often felt inferior around my father-in-law, a brilliant professor with a Cal Tech degree, who was in on the ground floor of the emergence of computers at UCLA. He was a member of the esteemed Rand Corporation Think Tank and is credited with contributing to the design of the computerized signals on freeway ramps. When I earned my doctorate in religion I figured he might take note of my advanced degree when he wrote the names on the Christmas envelopes. I was secretly hoping that year he would address me as ‘Reverend Doctor’ or ‘Doctor’ and not just ‘Reverend’ so I might catch up with him a bit. Nope, it remained ‘Reverend’ until he died. I thought I had never made it to that next prized intellectual tier in his eyes and I always wondered why.

I finally learned long after his death that he held the ‘Reverend’ status in much higher esteem than any academic credential. That was many years back when clergy were considered the most admired professionals in the culture. Things have changed. We managed to drop below the pharmacists a couple of years ago. My guess is the smart professor knew there was a realm of life that could match or surpass the contents of the academic mind and that would be the emotion-centered faculties he so revered but his professional dealings would not allow for much if any emotion. He obviously had compassion enough to want to prevent motorists from killing others while attempting to merge with traffic on freeway ramps, but he knew there was more where that came from.

I came across a book a few years ago titled Fire in the Crucible: the Alchemy of Creative Genius by John Briggs. I didn’t have to go any further than to read the opening sentence on the dust jacket before buying it. The brief blurb stated “Geniuses are not necessarily smarter or more talented than other people. But they give their attention to subtle nuances, contradictory feelings and perceptions that others experience and ignore. By focusing on sensory nuances, geniuses create themselves. They may even change the structure of their own brains.”

I figured there could be such characters as brain-altered ‘dumb geniuses’ sniffing around on the planet and I could become one of them if I got lucky. Briggs suggests that we don’t have to be very bright and clever to be geniuses but we do have to be persistent. Hey, I can be pretty unrelenting and disciplined. I’ve written three morning pages without missing a day since May 10, 2001. I’m not necessarily proud of that achievement because it’s just one more activity that helps fill a retired ADHD pastor’s day. The other time-filler-upper addiction was getting up before dawn and jogging two to three miles six days a week for 35 years. I kept an eye out for undiscovered nuances and eventually found about fifteen bucks in change on the streets that others had ignored. I gave it up when I came to the conclusion I really didn’t like to jog and it was no way to try to make a living.

While running around and wearing out park paths and sidewalks in my neighborhood, I’ve reflected often on the 1960s Arcology designs advanced by Paolo Soleri, a commercial architect and futurist. The giant carless, ecologically-sound mega cities are designed to accommodate tens of thousands of inhabitants. The unique designs were often felt to be too bizarre for the likes of most citizens when the plans were revealed in academic venues across the country decades ago. However, in recent years several countries have begun to pay attention to his work. It struck me the reactions from those who saw the designs and dismissed them were the people Briggs wrote about; those who might tromp over “subtle nuances, contradictory feelings and perceptions” that sleuths like this emotionally-oriented preacher might stumble across and detect.

I’ve come to the conclusion we need to rely a bit more on our mid-brain faculties, functions comprised of our profound primal emotions, rather than primarily depending upon our forebrain emissions, functions given to reason and intellect in our audacious fact-finding ventures. Maybe rather than so many Think Tanks, we need a “Feel Tank,” where we can be in touch with the subtleties of human emotions and interactions—all the fear, longing, rage, lust, and hope that other brilliant minds overlooked, assuming such things would merely cloud their thinking.

ARTICLE: Connecting with Clergy Colleagues

Fri, 07 Jan 2011 20:14:18 GMT

By Buzz Stevens

After serving six years as a campus minister I realized that assignments beyond-the-local-church can cause one to feel like a second-class colleague at times. Maybe it was just me, but after my special appointment stint I needed to check out how I would fair with local church pastor types. So, within a month into my new appointment as a church pastor, I contacted two nearby senior ministers and asked them if they would like to join me for lunch. We met one-on-one on separate occasions.

Naturally I figured they would reciprocate by inviting me to a luncheon meeting in due time. During my six-year stay no invitations came from my colleagues, and I took it personally. Twenty years later, I received some third-class mail pertaining to continuing education events from one of those pastors. A handwritten note on the bottom of one of the pages caught my attention. It stated simply “Buzz, you'll never know what our lunch meeting meant to me when you first came to town a couple of decades ago. It was a true gift!” He was right; I never knew, but I was certain it was a gift to me at the time.

Now that I am retired, I've gotten rather pushy with preachers, whether they are active or pensioned, by asking point blank if they ever ask colleagues to lunch or coffee times. One preacher confessed “There is no clergy person in our conference with whom I would particularly care to have lunch.” I thought he was kidding! He claimed he was serious, but admitted later, “If a colleague were to turn me down, I would not handle that too well, so why bother?”

It seems we ministers are fragile characters when it comes to making friends within our ranks. I was fortunate to have two of my clergy mentors as luncheon partners during the first decade of my ministry. I met with them individually every two or three months. It dawned on me one day that neither of them initiated invitations to meet; I always asked them to lunch. So, I decided to wait until one of those pastors contacted me first. Okay, it was silly, but that's the way I felt, real childish. We touched base rather briefly at conference events over the next seven or so years, but an invite never came. One afternoon I received a call from the wife of one of them. She informed me that he had died suddenly that day. She said, “You know, you were his best minister friend. He would want me to give you his robes and books, and, of course, he would have wanted you to preside over his memorial service.” I decided to never play the “who calls first?” invitation game again with my colleagues.

I've always wondered about what the clergy covenant really entails. Webster's dictionary defines “covenant” as a “binding or solemn agreement made by two or more individuals to do or keep from doing a specified thing; a compact.” Which can translate, “Let's get close” or “Stay out of my hair.” I think it just may mean, in part anyway, initiating and receiving invitations, but the covenant mostly has to do with making the first move.

Take the risk, pastors, and heed the warning by Virginia Woolf who confessed, “I have lost friends, some by death—others through sheer inability to cross the street.”

Willard "Buzz" Stevens is a retired pastor in the Desert Southwest Conference of the United Methodist Church. This article originally appeared in Circuit Rider.

ARTICLE: Being Honest with Our Doubts

Sun, 01 Aug 2010 16:20:40 GMT

By Buzz Stevens

“There is no well-defined boundary between honesty and dishonesty. The frontiers of one blend with the outside limits of the other, and he who attempts to tread this dangerous ground may be sometimes in one domain and sometimes in the other.” – O. Henry

The blurred frontiers between truthfulness and deceitfulness began to emerge early on for me…right about the time I met with the conference Board of Ordained Ministry for my Deacon’s orders. There was the matter of accepting unreservedly the notion of the Virgin Birth, and other doctrines, such as the overwhelming concept of the Holy Trinity. I was not asked about these matters specifically but I assumed I was supposed to buy it all.

My heart was in overdrive when those subjects surfaced in an interview with thirty scary, somber-looking Board members in black suits who sat clustered together some distance from me. That image remained etched in my mind for four long decades. I thought to myself in that moment before the Board, “You can preach it ‘til you believe it fully, Stevens. Go ahead and give the impression you’re okay with all the dogma.” I passed!

And I preached it until the day I retired. But the wrestling remained, and I never blew my cover.

I had an active prayer life throughout my ministry, and it became even more earnest with the demands of being a district superintendent. After retiring, I bumped into several pensioned clergy and elderly lay people from my former churches who claimed they no longer believed in prayer, and many who were questioning whether there was a heaven. I do not recall those concerns coming at me so forcefully during my active ministry years or perhaps I was in ‘domain denial.’

The questioning of prayer caught me off guard because I have remained faithful to a daily regimen. A 70-year-old, highly dedicated layperson that seldom missed a church service or his evening prayers throughout his entire life confessed to me recently, “I’ve just given up on prayer!”

“Why?” I asked, mostly out of selfish curiosity.

“My mother, as you know,” he revealed with misty eyes, “had Alzheimer’s disease for eight years. In her last few years, her condition began to affect my father’s health so I prayed to God every night that she would die. I never missed a night, Pastor. She lived two more years before expiring and now I firmly believe she managed to cause my father to give up on his own life. He died soon after. Then the Tsunami and Hurricane Katrina hit and I became convinced there is no God out there concerned enough in human life to make a difference!”

The committed member did not give up on attending church but he did abandon any notion of a prayer life.

His ordeal brought to my mind the end days of my mother. She contracted breast cancer at the age of thirty-nine when I was seventeen. I had no church background, but I prayed every night that she would live until she died seven months later.

It occurred to me years after entering ministry that I came into the church needing to deal with my anger toward God. I never dealt with my deepest feelings toward prayer during my tenure and I still carry some residual anger toward a silent God. I had passed on my belief, or disbelief, in the certainty of prayer for fifty-five years. I offered up those pastoral prayers in worship every Sunday and giving the impression most, if not all prayers would be answered. It was not until I retired that I allowed myself to think about church members who might have eventually given up and quit attending worship over disillusionment with their own unanswered prayers.

Heaven only knows how honest I was about questions regarding after-life hopes. Rather than finding ways to honor those attending worship who did not believe in a heaven, throughout my ministry I just continued to lift up prayers for those who were true believers in the promise of the Pearly Gates.

The lonely times for me in ministry had to do with believing I was the only preacher who was not certain about every facet of church dogma and its rituals. Suppressing my doubts had to have affected my mental health and welfare over the years, and perhaps the well-being of a number of believers and non-believers seated in those pews that chose not to reveal their uncertainties because I had not demonstrated that the church was a safe place to do so.

If I had it to do over again would I stand more courageously at the frontiers where honesty and dishonesty intersect?

I don’t know. But I believe I would risk doing the following on occasion:

Before a pastoral prayer, I would say, “Many of you believe whole-heartedly in prayer, but there are some in these pews who may have given up on it after praying for months or years for the sake of loved ones to no avail. Either way, please know you’re in the right house.”

Before an Easter message I might announce “Some of you believe in physical resurrection, others a spiritual resurrection, but there may be some present who do not believe in an after-life at all. Whatever you believe, please know you’re in the right house.”

John Cobb, Professor Emeritus at Claremont School of Theology, claims that part of the reason Mainline Protestant institutions are rapidly declining has to do with clergy and lay people not being open and honest about their disbeliefs. We are uncomfortable with doubt, so we hide it from one another and the church loses its authenticity and its healing power. We gain nothing by feigning total confidence. As Voltaire said to Frederick the Great in the 18^th century: “Doubt is not a pleasant state of mind, but certainty is absurd.”

While serving my last church, I visited a widowed 84-year-old church member who was admitted to an intensive care unit for a rapid heart condition. I asked her if she had experienced any major problems just prior to being hospitalized. Mildred uttered softly “Well, Pastor, my dog died a few days ago and I dread stepping through my front door and not being met by him. My husband, as you know, passed away two years ago.” She was silent for a time and then with misty eyes she mumbled, “I think God may no longer be in control and I’ve never been so scared in my life.”

I asked if she might say more about that but she was unable to respond. Initially I figured the tears had to do with the grief over her husband and pet but my hunch was she may have been weeping over the fact she had just stopped believing in an omnipotent God. Her theology, or lack of it, may have put her in ICU. If she had held throughout her entire life to an image of an invincible, commanding, transcendent Godhead and suddenly that assurance vanished, her fear in her dying days might have had to do with facing a disappointed and possibly an angry Creator.

How many of our congregants gradually and quietly stop believing in an all-powerful Architect? They may remain silent in church until their last breath because they fear their pew partners and pastors believe firmly and unwaveringly an all-powerful God and would not understand. They fear condemnation and exclusion if they were honest with their doubts, and so they sit in the pew (or don’t), spiritually isolated from other sometimes-believers with whom they might have shared and grown.

Rather than letting years of fear and uncertainty send our laity into the Intensive Care Unit, we need to form small Intensive Theological Units in our churches to allow parishioners to be able to discuss and reveal their deepest fears and pain. All congregants need to be permitted to confess all parts of their faith openly and boldly. For some it will be their confusion regarding shifting theological parameters and for others their convictions that an omnipotent God is still out there, caring for them. Whatever their ratio of questions to answers, everyone—including the pastor—can bring their doubts into the light and begin to live an honest faith together.