The Isolation of the Clergy Person

Structural Dynamics and Role Expectations

Early in 2023, I contributed an essay to Tom Oord’s volume, Why the Church of the Nazarene Should be LGBTQ+ Affirming. The book combined essays from scholars, allies, queer folks, and interested parties. As I’ve wrote a few months later, the church changed its position on LGBTQ+ folks, elevating the “traditional” view to doctrinal status. This allowed church leaders to institute church trials to remove credentials and/or membership from clergy who wrote essays. Many of these were friends, including Tom.

I had written my essay on data I’d collected on young Nazarene clergy in 2018. The survey demonstrated that many young clergy were not interested in fighting culture war battles but serving their congregations. While they were happy to be in the denomination, they said that three things could change that perspective: power plays, a rise in legalism, and an increase in political partisanship.

Part of the launch of the book included the creation of a Facebook Group to not only promote the book but provide ongoing support for interested parties. I have tried to keep up to date, especially as the above-mentioned trials were going forward.

Last Monday, a post on the site caught my attention. It was a video from Mallori Casey explaining why she was surrendering her ministerial credentials and pursuing a career in insurance instead. She gave to primary reasons for her decision in her ten minute video. The second had to due with the denomination’s stance on LGBTQ+ people and the draconian way that it had acted toward those who dissent.

The first reason really caught my attention. She said:

I’ve come to admit that the structures of the Church of the Nazarene are set up to abuse, or at least neglect, and place unrealistic expectations and pressures upon local pastors without any real systemic support. … I was given a lot of supportive words and prayers but not a truly supportive system to back it up.

Back at the beginning of my career, my colleague in the sociology department — himself a former Nazarene pastor — told me, “The Church of the Nazarene has blended the best parts of the episcopal and congregation systems of polity.” My somewhat cynical response was, “Yes, and they also blended the worst parts of both systems.”

Mallori put her finger on a serious problem. There is a top-down system of expectations that don’t match life at the local congregational level. There is too much distance between the top of the leadership structure, the intermediate structure, and the local church. This is complicated by pastors of churches of a certain size being “called” to a superintendent role and other higher leadership roles.¹ I spent an hour discussing these dynamics with another Nazarene clergy friend.

Mallori’s video came out just a few days after the end of “Pastor Appreciation Month”. A quick Google search shows that while the Apostle Paul talks about giving honor to those who manage the church well, it was Focus on the Family that promoted the October celebration.

I think it’s a wonderful thing for members of a congregation to engage in recognition of their pastor (even when it becomes an expected event — not from the pastor but from the broader religious culture). The pastors deserve their gift cards and trinkets and trips away. But like so much of American culture, it is a small token that fails to address the larger structural concerns.

Pastors are not supported as they should be. When things go well, they have sacrificed much to make that happen. When things go badly and the church is on the brink of closure, they are treated as pariahs who should have done something.

This is especially the case in the thousands of small churches across the country. While the largest churches get the attention,² many (most?) pastors are operating as best they know how with little if any guidance from the powers that be.

Our local Methodist church, Belong, provides another example of how this happens. Pastor Jasper Peters was invited to plant the church seven years ago in a 1920s building whose congregation had disbanded. He set about to invite people to a church that would be justice oriented, affirming, and concerned about creating real community.

The goal was to grow the church to the point where it could be chartered as an official UMC congregation, take over all commitments to building upkeep, and contribute to larger church operations. There were many proposals on how to move that forward, beginning with the upkeep of an old building. Then in December the boiler broke. Asking for assistance from the group responsible for the building led us to learn that not only were they not willing to fix the boiler but had already decided (on their own) to sell the building.

Thankfully, we are now in a newer building (1950s!) that we share with another congregation. We will get some proceeds from the sale of the old building. When the conversation about Chartering arose again, it was difficult to get anyone to articulate a plan forward (although there have been some positive developments recently).

Even though we have a strong leadership team, most of this has fallen up the pastor to navigate, to plead, to negotiate. And, because the UMC is fully in the episcopal polity system, he could be moved anywhere else in July.

Let me zoom back out to the structural concerns. Far too many pastors are left to make their own way in difficult financial times, polarized politics, interpersonal challenges in the congregation, and their own lives and families. The support they receive from those higher up in the hierarchy doesn’t provide much guidance on how to manage all of that.

So it’s good that we have a month to acknowledge their hard work in response to their call. But the struggles felt by Mallori or Jasper — or Ryan Burge, who recently closed his congregation — are very real.

Gift cards are great and all. And they are well-deserved.

But a little bit of partnership and strategic engagement with the church leadership structures would probably pay more dividends.

1. There’s an analogy here to successful professors becoming deans, provosts, and presidents with each step a little farther removed from the core educational enterprise.

2. And have their own set of crises — more on Friday when I address Scot McKnight and Tommy Phillips’ excellent Invisible Jesus.