Wisdom evolving out of the clergy?

The other day I came across this little video about fishing. Take 2 minutes to watch it.  

In the event the video does not work for you, let me just share the overall point I of the video. 

Think of fish in three columns - baby, youth, adult. We encourage the taking of the adult fish because they are larger and have had time to reproduce. We do not encourage taking the baby or the youth fish because they have not had time to procreate.   

So as we take fish from the adult column, we are removing the large fish from the gene pool. Over time we remove the genes for big fish and then we end up with smaller and smaller fish in the oceans. Fish end up evolving "big" out of the fish gene pool.

So instead of pulling all the fish from one columns, the video advocates that we fish across each column pulling a little bit of fish from each column.  

Holding onto that I think of the UMC and clergy.  

In the UMC there is a push to get young clergy. The thought being that if we get younger clergy then they will be in ministry longer and replace the older clergy over time. This makes sense like fishing for just the big fish. Over time the unintended consequence of focusing on young clergy means we may very well be evolving wisdom out of the clergy ranks. 

If we are focused more on the column of young clergy than we are on middle aged or older clergy then we potentially pull certain "genes" from the clergy ranks. That is we pull the potential wisdom that comes with ageing from the clergy ranks. Thus, the unintentional consequence may be there are ranks of immature clergy who remain stunted in growth and unable to find elder mentors.

To put it another way, are we unintentionally evolving wisdom out of the clergy?

Focusing on church keeps us small

There are a lot of projected reasons as to why the Church is in decline. Everyone has a theory as to why this is the case and, adding to the conversation, here is my theory.  

We are too focused on churches to the detriment of Church.  

I am not talking about the idea that we are too focused on the institution of the church or the four walls of the church or not reaching out to new people or not changing worship styles.   

I am talking about scale. We are too focused on our own little church to the detriment of the larger, universal (catholic) Church.  

The problems of our day are massive in size. Global hunger. Poverty. Preventable diseases. Homelessness. Education. Violence. 

These are massive problems and require massive structure in order to address and take them head on. When we focus on our little church we are limited by what our church can do, repair, help, and reconcile. Even the largest individual churches pale in comparison in scale compared to most denominations. The Catholic Church has over 1 billion people.  

That is scale. That is scale that can change the world.  

Perhaps our individual churches remain small because we do not focus on the Church, but we are focused on our little church.  

A cup of water can quench an individual, a well can sustain a village.   

A church can help an individual, the Church can change the world.  

Confidentiality - the socially acceptable way to be a jerk

In the south, if you open a sentence by saying “Bless her/his heart” you are given a much broader spectrum of what people will let you say.

You can say, “Jason is jerk.” And you can get some dirty looks.

You can say, “Bless his heart, Jason is a jerk.” And you will a couple of eyes closed head tilted nods.

There is a Church version of “Bless his/her heart” and it is this – “Can I tell you something in confidence?”

Confidence is a unique sort of thing in the church. It is like a mix between “Bless his heart” and the Cone of Silence and “What happens in Vegas” and speaking anonymously on the internet.

And this formula gives people a great deal of freedom to be total and absolute jerks.

I understand we all have things that we “need” to say and it is good to have a person you trust to say these things to. It has been my experience that much of what is said to a confidant should really be said to the person for which there is a disagreement. And because of this, it is quickly clear that the confidant is there to affirm the speaker and take their side.

There are times when we need to talk with someone in confidence for all sorts of reasons, but just because you are “in confidence” does not give you a license to let all Love go out the door and speak like a wheels off crazy jerk.

I have met a great number of jerks in the church by way of the “cone of confidence”. We all can be jerks. I would love to be able to share just a fraction of the stuff I hear in confidence in order to defend my on pride and justify my actions/words. But I cannot. And I am okay with it because I know respect and know the value of confidence.

However, the environment of speaking in confidence is an environment in which our “jerk sides” can easily come out and dominate. This is in part why we practice the disciplines of the faith so that are better equipped to speak in the beautiful (and abused) environment of confidentiality.