the paradox of pastoral leadership and spiritual recovery

The thing I notice a lot from the New Testament is that there is a reaction to the present entrenched religious organizational life. Jesus doesn't set out to be over against, but "for" the kingdom of God. Yet, that puts him in reaction to the established reality. The apostle Paul runs into the same thing both within Judaism and the emerging Christian church.

I often go back to an article from around 1990 by Anne Wilson Schaef that tries to answer the question "is the church an addictive organization?" That article was pivotal for me not just in my church life, but my personal life. That is where I first found the kind of personal spiritual life questions and the questions as a leader in the church of how what I was part of as the church was more focused on its own goals than on announcing the breaking in of God's kingdom in Jesus Christ. I thought I was doing that with all my social justice works and statements. The journey since I first read this article in 1990 has taken me in a way I never would have dreamed.

I think all church leaders today need to be working their own 12 Step recovery program. The folks I know, like myself, have our own host of personal addictions. Most prevalent are workaholism and codependence. I see the latter especially in the way my own denomination of the United Church of Christ seeks to fix and control the behavior of some of the other addictive behaviors like sexual and alcohol of other leaders and in the way it seeks to "fix" the world around it. The question for all leaders is not how can I/we fix the world around us, but "what is it of my experience of Jesus Christ that the world around me needs to know." That is reflective of the light of God in my life rather than my hog-tying the message to fit what my mind is obsessing over.

It is risky for me in my recovery to hang around a number of my colleagues and the official parts of our denomination (as well as other denominations) because as a recovering addict I am to "go to any lengths to maintain my sobriety", but the behavior and thinking I experience around the wider church is very addictive. Yet, I am chastised for not being "loyal" and even questioned somewhat professionally for not being the kind of "UCC minister" that the general institution deems the norm and faithful to its goals. This is a great paradox, but not unheard of as I read the N.T.

Keith Miller who was a prolific author on Christian spirituality and then who began his own journey of recovery, is one I think we could use a lot both personally as church leaders in our spiritual recovery and thus how we lead as pastors in the body of Christ.