3.3 Professional Life: Teacher, Pastor, Social Justice Prophet
I started my professional career right after my time in graduate school at S.M.U. (my brothers could hardly believe it; they thought I was going to be a professional student for the rest of my life). Because I wanted to teach in a confessional religious setting rather than in a secular religion department in a small college, I decided to work as a lay person in teaching ministries with all age levels in local United Methodist churches (1973-1984; in southern Louisiana for the first two years, and then in Denver, Colorado). |
After receiving a call to ordained ministry and completing the mandatory seminary degree and church process for ordination; I was appointed to local churches as a pastor beginning in 1984, and served United Methodist churches in Utah and Colorado, urban and rural, large and small, for 26 years. I had many wonderful experiences those years of serving others; of sharing my Christian faith; of loving and being loved; and of teaching and learning from those I taught. While serving in several single-pastorate churches in the beginning, I discovered those parts of ministry I gravitated toward and those I didn’t. I began to question whether doing all the functions of a pastor was for me, or if I should rather specialize on a few. With the help of one of my supervisors, I learned that my four primary spiritual gifts (among 17) are Learning, Teaching, Administration and Social Justice Prophet. Also, I discovered I’m an INTJ personality type (one of 16 types on the Myers-Briggs scale). Without going into detail, this means that I’m an introverted, intuitive, structured intellectual, which happens to be a pretty rare type for a local church clergyperson. |
As a result of this process of self-discovery, I decided it was best for me to always try to team up with another pastor who has a more typical pastoral personality type and spiritual gifts (in churches large enough to have two pastors) and specialize in adult education, organization and social justice ministries. This was an unusual kind of specialized ministry for the relatively few churches open to it and which I particularly sought out, and it afforded me many in-depth teaching opportunities and the joys (and frustrations) of prophetic social justice work with adults in mainline churches as well as special access for local public witnessing and protests.
For the most part, the people in the churches I served honored my right to hold my strong belief that no part of reality--including its social, economic and political justice dimensions--is outside and separate from religious spirituality, even when they didn’t totally agree with my personal stances on particular issues. However, there was often resistance to the idea that public witness and action on justice issues by groups of like-minded religious persons is an important part of fulfilling God’s call. That churches should only inform members about controversial issues so they can individually act in public (especially on political issues) is unfortunately still where many mainline Christians draw the line.
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I have to admit that I had limited success during my active years in ministry in convincing many laypersons to change their long-held positions on this issue. This is one of the main reasons for creating this website. It provides me the space not only to lay out the many resources that have strong arguments supporting this position, but also to share my success in finding a more non-threatening and gradual way of developing faith/politics action groups in local communities of faith.
I was involved in many ways concerning education, social justice, and interfaith activities during my years of active ministry. To list just a few: public reviews of films that caused controversy in religious communities; courses and protests about gay rights, forming a Mormon/Protestant/Roman Catholic dialogue group in Salt Lake City; leading an educational mission trip to Kenya; participating in the centrist organization We Believe Colorado (affiliated with Faith in Public Life on the national level), designed to expand the public witness for the Common Good to counter the monopoly of the religious right in the media; participating in the Faith & Politics Group of the Colorado Democrat Party prior to the 2008 election, which was organized to counter the perception of many that all Democrats are anti-religious; and helping found the local interfaith social justice group, Common Voice.
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The last 14 years of my active ministry was with my wife, Claire Childress--for eight years as co-pastors of Westminster UMC, in a Denver suburb, and for six years as co-pastors of First UMC, Boulder, CO. Many clergy couples find it difficult to work in the same church; however, it was easy for us, because we have complementary strengths--she, preaching and pastoral care; and I, teaching and administration.
These last years were professionally the most joyful and fulfilling for me. The Boulder church is a Reconciling Congregation, meaning that it stands over against our denomination’s unjust stance against gays. This meant that for the first time in our careers, we could fully live out our beliefs on this most important civil rights issue of our day. |
There was another very fulfilling event. I'd been trying for many years to find some interfaith contacts with Muslims. It was difficult because many Muslim leaders in our area were very conservative and weren’t interested in interfaith contacts. Then, finally in 2007, this changed quickly. Two young Muslim men attended worship with us one Sunday and spoke to us about their organization’s work for global peace through interfaith dialogue. That began wonderful ongoing relationships with the young Muslim brothers and sisters of the Multicultural Mosaic Foundation, one of the many local organizations of the worldwide Gulen Movement.
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Part of their generous service is to send small groups of non-Muslims to Turkey to experience Turkish culture and learn about the Sufi-influenced understanding of Islam of their inspirational leader, Fethullah Gulen. Claire and I went in the summer of 2007; we had a wonderful time and learned a lot about Turkey’s rich history as a bridge between Asia and Europe through several millennia. |
With respect to the purpose of this website, one of the most important new things I learned on this trip was how radically different the Turkish understanding of the relationship between religion and politics is from the American one founded on our Constitution. The view that religion must be entirely a private affair, severely restricted in public space, has roots in the influence of French culture on the founding of the modern Turkish state following WWI. Learning this helped me understand events in world news that are often puzzling to Americans, e.g. French laws outlawing Muslim headscarves in public.
This has given me a great appreciation of the uniqueness of our Constitution, which ensures the right of religious expression in public life. Sometimes we assume that all nations guarantee this right the same way we do. They definitely do not; and this helps us appreciate our unique place in world history. More about this later.
This has given me a great appreciation of the uniqueness of our Constitution, which ensures the right of religious expression in public life. Sometimes we assume that all nations guarantee this right the same way we do. They definitely do not; and this helps us appreciate our unique place in world history. More about this later.
(See the next page for a little information about the history of my faith journey.)
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