The Lonely Pastor

“Do you ever feel like a ‘monster’ in our world, like the one in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein?”, the teacher asked. My hand rocketed up to answer the question, as it frequently did. 

While the other students in my high school English class ducked down behind their Trapper Keepers, avoiding eye contact with Ms. Cormack, I relished the opportunity to make a connection.  A connection with the book, yes, but especially one with my classmates and the teacher. 

When I was called on to answer, I lamented about all the moving around I did as a kid and how I often felt like a weirdo, like the monster. I was always having to relearn the rules of social situations. Just when I figured out how to fit in in one place, my family would relocate again.

I shared that moving to a small mostly Dutch town in Michigan prompted teasing about my dark curly hair or the fact that my family didn’t go to the right church. Then when we moved to Philadelphia, I was the monster again, this time because I had a strange way of speaking, saying words like “melk” instead of “milk”, ordering “pop” instead of “soda”, and calling a group of people “you guys”, even when the group included girls. I went into way more detail than Ms. Cormack needed, but the sharing helped me feel less alone.

As I grew up, I learned that my vulnerability was a relationship magnet. Being hyper-honest about my past and experiences repelled some, but attracted others, others who also desired vulnerable connection.

After moving to yet another small Dutch Michigan town in my 20s, where everyone but me seemed to have their friend groups, I eventually found community. It took quite a bit of time, but I was blessed to form some really deep and lovely friendships, where our stories of pain and healing rooted our closeness. 

Entering seminary in my late 30s was a master class on vulnerability. There, I started examining my motives for my vulnerability, the quality I always presumed was a strength. I discovered it’s a fine line between being vulnerable and over-sharing.

Pastors are charged with nurturing a community, a community that is much larger than you as an individual. This means that the pastor’s vulnerability, while important, is a tool to benefit the community, not herself. A good pastor needs a certain level of self-awareness that her words have power. In proper doses, a pastor’s vulnerability invites sharing, plants community, and bears the fruit of community members saying “me too.” But if a pastor over-shares, she can shut down the vulnerability of others, making it about her instead of the group. 

Rev. Nadia Bolz-Weber has a great phrase she says of preaching. “Preach from your scars, not your wounds.” That is, talk about that which is personal, but not that which is overly tender and broken in the moment. 

To preach from your scars is invitational, preaching from your wounds risks appearing overly emotional or prioritizing your own needs. That idea greatly helped me check myself before sharing. If I share that my mother is seriously ill and I am having a terrible day in the Bible Study I am leading, others might just listen to me, and be silent about their own pains. The Bible study isn’t about me, it’s about them. Keep your trap shut, Beth. Save it for your therapist. This is what a good pastor does.

Or is it?

What I thought I knew about vulnerability has been upended in yet another move, this time to California. What happens when you go from having a well-tended community, one largely outside your church because of professional boundaries, to a place where you know no one? 

What do you do when you are the person who teaches that people should look to the church for community, yet that very “preach from your scars and not your wounds” teaching keeps you at arm’s length from everyone? 

What do you do when you have honest to goodness wounds and you too want to be held by your church? How do you be a person who values authenticity, yet day in and day out you commodify that “authenticity” as a tool to help others even at the constant expense of your soul? 

Is it possible to be a good pastor and a person that needs relationship?

I recently began a series of classes on community building, focused on the work of community expert Charles Vogl, who also happens to be a congregant at my church. Charles teaches “leaders the wisdom and principles to build deep community that leads to greater resilience, innovation, and connectedness among the people we care about and are critical for success.” His work began from his own years of loneliness when he wondered if he would ever develop friendships or places of belonging. 

In my session this past week, I found myself in a small breakout group with one of the leaders, Julia. Julia, among her other executive coaching accomplishments, is adept at building social communities wherever she lives. After she shared about how she had built this beautiful, connected, intimate group of friendships in her own neighborhood, through dinners at her home each Sunday night, she asked me about my community.

My vulnerability dam broke. I told Julia and the group how I felt aimless. How I felt I had no one here and didn’t know how to build something for myself and be a good pastor. I shared how I was a master at building community and connections back in Michigan for other people, but I didn’t have a clue as to how to build community for myself at my own church.

When I told Julia about “preaching from my wounds and not my scars,” she was floored. “What do you mean you don’t get to have your needs met in church? Why can’t you participate in the same ways as others at church? Why not?”

“Boundaries,” I stuttered. It’s bad boundaries to let yourself be a part of the community in the same way. Julia kind of cocked her head to the side and went silent. She didn’t know how to respond to that. Neither did I. 

Something is brewing in me that I don’t have answers for yet. 

I never questioned the seminary lessons that sharing for the sake of my own needs might be “too much.” That my vulnerability for the sake of being seen or understood made my personhood “too much.” That the dulling of my voice and feelings might just be another way of making me, a woman, take up less space. That the cost of my being a good pastor might mean that I would become a curated image instead of a fully embodied person who needs connection and care like anyone else. That perhaps I had devolved into a kind of emotional Frankenstein. I mean, even Jesus needed community who would pray with him when he was facing his own death. Do I think I am better than Jesus?

I wish I could say that I have this all figured out, but I don’t. I trust that God has me on a new path, a fuller more embodied path, where I will learn how to be a good pastor AND a good community member. A path where I have a role as a pastor in the community, yes, but where I get my needs met too. 

So I start with being honest here. I am Beth, a woman with dark curly hair, who prefers soda to pop, and is a good pastor who needs people, needs community, and very much needs to be honest about her wounds. I hope you will put your Trapper Keeper down and join me with your “me too”.