Entering into the Next Phase of My Calling

      This past week, I attended a three night conference in St. Charles, MO held by the Lutheran Congregations for Mission in Christ (LCMC). These good folks are a Lutheran association of churches and pastors that began as a separation from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) over what they believed to be the ELCA’s serious deviations in practice from Scripture and core Lutheran teachings. The last church we attended in California was an LCMC church, and Cindy, my wife’s business partner, is on the board of trustees for the LCMC and she graciously invited me as her guest. In attending, I was able to reconnect and have good conversation with a good pastor friend from California, and able to speak with a few more people as well, and also listen to the keynote speakers. All told, for the most part, I think it was a good experience for me, with only a couple of notable exceptions which themselves served a purpose to drive home a major point the Lord wanted to get across to me.

     Throughout most of my adult life, where professional ministry, or ministry in general is concerned, I’ve always tried to do what I thought I was supposed to do and come under the authority of a church or an organization, protecting and defending that body’s structures and creeds. This was true when I was a student and involved with New Tribes Mission, it was true when I was a part of a Messianic Jewish congregation for a time, and it was true when I joined the Roman Catholic Church and subsequently the Old Catholic Church as well. I felt that it couldn’t just be me, that there was safety in the larger, more organized body. But in every case, something happened to put me on the outside, even when I fought like hell to return. The outside, the periphery scared me. The feeling of being “not good enough,” when my conformity slipped even the slightest and threatened a separation even as I knew somewhere inside, and totally ignored, that my place, my ministry, my calling was elsewhere. This happened with the LCMC as well when I sought certification as a pastor with this association. I went through the process but when it became time to look for a “contract-call” as a part of my process, nothing came. I actually lost count of how many churches I applied to. It always fell through for one reason or the other. And then through the efforts and vision of Cindy and my wife, we all up and moved to Kentucky, in an area where there are no LCMC churches within driving distance, to start their business and be farmers.

     Years ago, some time around 2008-9, I received a kind of vision from the Lord while I was working unloading trucks for a Walmart in Orange, CA. The vision was of a sheepfold, a sheep ranch if you will, with many different paddocks or pastures and many different hired shepherds to oversee the sheep. Some were responsible for hundreds if not thousands of sheep, some were responsible for only ten or twenty. In this sheep ranch, there were some, many, shepherds who were abusing the sheep. Some were just giving them cheap, bad food instead of the more expensive feed they were supposed to, and pocketing the difference in price. Some were beating the sheep, or even sexually abusing them (yes, this is a real thing). Some were just negligent, and not taking care of them properly; leaving them without proper food or water, without trimming their hooves, or shearing them at the proper time to keep them healthy. Some were slaughtering them for their own purposes and reporting them as lost to wild animals. Some were shearing them, selling the wool under the table and pocketing the money themselves. Needless to say, those sheep that could escape their shepherds ran for the hills. Some were able to survive and look after themselves for the most part, finding good grazing and water. Some made themselves sick eating grass that had been sprayed with poisons, or ingesting poisonous foliage not knowing the difference, and some died from it. Others ate themselves off of cliffs. Most were so scarred by the bad shepherds that they ran at the first appearance of anyone who went to bring them back if the shepherds even tried. Many shepherds just marked them up as lost, and continued with their practices. As I was shown this “vision,” I could feel the anger of the Owner of the ranch at the abusive shepherds. It was clear He would deal with them, but at the moment His concern wasn’t for the shepherds, but for the sheep who were lost, injured, sick, and neglected out in the wilderness. And then I realized what He was telling me. I was being called as a “search and rescue” shepherd to go into the wilderness, away from the sheep ranch, and to tend to His scared, hurt, and abused sheep where they were at. To not frighten them any more than had been done, but to take good feed with me and look after them in the wild as I come across them. My purpose wasn’t to bring them back to the sheep ranch or to the paddocks or pastures there where they would be put back into the toxic and abusive environment, but to just be there with them in the surrounding wilds and look after them for Him.

     It’s been years since that vision and calling, and a lot has happened since then, but to be honest I didn’t really get it or understand it or any of the implications of it, not for a long time. But over those years, God brought different people into my path who were among those lost sheep. Did I make mistakes? Absolutely. Did I really understand what I was being asked to do? Not really. I was still wounded myself from my own church experiences, and still believing that I needed to be a part of a larger organization or church in order to do anything. It was a part of my conditioning as an American Christian, that in order to serve as a shepherd, I had to be under the umbrella of a church or organization. And of course, my calling was so foreign, so alien to those churches that they didn’t understand or even recognize it as a calling. And so I was caught in a kind of Catch-22, frustrated and crying out to God, “Why? What am I doing wrong?”

     Over the last decade, as I took this both literal and metaphorical spiritual journey, God began to lead me in what I can only describe as my real training for this. He put upon me to go back to school for a psychology major which while I completed all of the requirements for the psychology major, was not able to complete the degree (this was also a recurring theme). He also impressed on me to really think about Paul’s writings in a way I hadn’t seen before and apply the information from my psychology coursework to what Paul was saying. He impressed upon me to really go back and study on my own research papers and scientific works and to understand what the Scriptures were saying in a way that I was never taught before in any church or school, but that all fit together in a cohesive whole, a kind of “grand unified theory of science and Scripture.” He drew me to places which, quite honestly, many churches regard as heresy and false teaching, and made me look at them again with data and evidence to back them up and to integrate them into the whole. Suffice it to say my personal statement of faith is not what it was even ten years ago. But most importantly, through study and personal experience, He was teaching me, little by little, what the Way of Jesus Christ really is, and that most churches bury it under their creeds and dogmas, if they have any understanding of it at all, so that it remains inaccessible to nearly everyone. Even now, as I’m writing this, I really don’t want to believe that, but from observation and experience it is the honest truth, and is the source of the many deep, systemic problems within all denominations and churches.

     And then He really began showing me the sheep to whom I had been called. The de-churched, the deconstructed, those “spiritual but not religious” who had no qualms with Jesus Christ or God, but wanted nothing to do with organized religion. There was no way they would trust the priest or pastor I had been ten years ago, much less the aspiring non-denominational missionary or pastor of thirty years ago. In order to go and tend them, I had to be one of them. But even then, there was a part of me, deep in my subconscious, that refused to accept this. There was a deep part of my self-identity that was still hoping at some point to be a pastor in a church somewhere as an integrated member in good standing of a denomination or organization.

     And this leads me back to this conference I attended. I did enjoy the conference for the most part, but one of the things which really, finally struck home and made its point to me while I was listening to the speakers is that, as a pastor, in order to reach out to those to whom I am called and to say what I need to say, I can’t be a part of a church or denomination. I absolutely need to stay on the periphery. That is, I need to stay outside of denominational constraints and constrictions. I can’t risk expulsion for violating creeds, church dogmas, or even merely church procedures and policies, and if I am to minister in the way I am called, I will likely be seen as flouting such things in every single instance by someone even if at the core, I am not. There are so many well-intentioned “Pharisees” bent on maintaining the “Law,” regulations, and procedures of their churches, that the Way of Jesus Christ becomes chained, stifled, trodden on, and ultimately lost somewhere as dogma triumphs over everything.

     That good pastor friend of mine at the conference told me that, like John the Baptist, I function as a kind of "Voice crying out in the wilderness." I operate out in the wild, the wastes if you will, away from the official temple structures and hierarchy shouting to anyone who will hear what the truth is, and confronting those Pharisees so stuck in their interpretation of the Scriptures that they refuse to recognize truth when they hear it because it’s not what their dogmas say. What I need to be able to say and how I need to say it can't run the risk of being able to be silenced or stifled by a larger church authority, even if that discipline is well intentioned.

     In many ways, this understanding is a kind of disorienting sea-change for me even though I’ve already been living it now for years. I will never be recognized or a part of a larger church organization, because I cannot be if I am to fulfill my calling and help create the conditions for change within the practice of Christianity itself both here in the United States and around the world. I can’t be a good standing member of the church establishment when it’s my calling to speak against it any more than John, a member of the kohanim by birth, could actually take his place as a temple priest and do what he was called to do.

     But this also puts me in a very lonely position, and a potentially dangerous one if somehow it becomes in any way about me, and not Jesus Christ. With no oversight, with no earthly authority keeping me in check, it is a frightening place to be. Is it really the Spirit of Christ speaking through me? Did He really just say that? Am I really hearing right? Am I just going off half-cocked? Am I just crazy? Is this really what this Scripture means? These are questions I ask myself on a regular basis, and have asked myself over the last decade. It’s been a process of learning the difference when it’s Him and when it’s me, what’s born from fear and what’s born from Him, and trusting Him enough to not pull back because of my fear. Do I make mistakes? Yes. Of course I do. That’s part of the discipleship process. You make a mistake, you recognize it, you learn from it, and you move on making course corrections as you learn. And I am learning that it is the Spirit of Christ who is ultimately my oversight if I trust Him with it.

     So, where do I go from here? What happens now? I’ve let go of such a deep part of my self-identity that it’s taking me some time to get my bearings. I haven’t been feeling well, and I’m just a little light-headed from it, but I know it will pass. And I hope that new opportunities will open for me to reach out to those to whom I am called, those who are wandering in the wild with me, and for me to tend to their wounds, feed them, and show them what the real Shepherd looks like and how much He loves and cares for them.