By Amy Butler
A church member picked me up at the airport when I returned from a last-minute trip to an unexpected family funeral. She was holding an armful of tulips for me. “Wow! I love tulips,” I told her, to which she answered, “I know!”
It seems that my feelings about tulips had come up in conversation with another church member, so she made a special point of bringing me some to brighten my day. In fact, I have been surprised several times recently by tulips dropped off at my house, arranged in worship and placed around the office.
Is it weird that members of my church know I love tulips and often send them my way? Is this the kind of information people should know about their pastor?
I’ve been reading a lot lately about the constant struggle pastors have to figure out if they are willing to take the risk of being real with their congregations, or whether limited engagement is just the safer way to go. Should your congregation really know, for example, that you love tulips? Is that really appropriate?
I don’t think I’m the only one who struggles with the dilemma about whether being real and vulnerable with your congregation is a smart way to go.
To be clear, I don’t think many pastors set out to be phony in their interaction with their churches, but sometimes it’s easier to wall off the real human side of the pastor just to avoid dealing with the potential pain of a whole lot of people knowing your business.
There are examples of pastors who have walled themselves off to their own peril, and there are stories of pastors who opened up only to lose their jobs.
A happy medium is hard to find. Pastors who aren’t real enough sometimes get called aloof, standoffish and unable to connect to real people. They wind up living secret lives that cripple them in their isolation.
Pastors who are transparent are (shockingly) unmasked as real people, much to the congregation’s disappointment, and dreams of intentional, genuine engagement are shattered on every side.
So, how real is too real? What degree of vulnerability do we owe our congregations in the interest of connecting effectively? By the same token, what degree of discretion do we owe our congregations so they don’t have to sit in the pews squirming uncomfortably at inappropriate personal disclosures?
It’s a fine line and a delicate balance, but it’s worth a closer look, because those pastors who get it right are often very effective leaders. After all, a deep, personal connection between pastor and people is built on the same trust that can take a congregation through change without too much bloodshed. A deep and genuine connection can transform both the lives of a congregation and the life of a pastor in profound ways.
It happened to me this week, with the travel and the funeral and the tulips. I didn’t think to ask for help, but my church family reached out to me as they would to any other member with cards, phone calls, help to cover responsibilities – and tulips.
Sure, I felt a little exposed as the care-ee rather than the care-er, but sometimes I think these precious moments of vulnerability lead all of us to a deeper understanding of what it means to be Gospel people.
After all, we follow a God who, in becoming human, embodied God’s deep love and great hopes for this world by jumping right in and living it all the way to the end. We give powerful testimony to God’s radical engagement when we live through the struggles and joys of human life with one another — jumping right in, telling the truth about our pain, creating space for acknowledgment and healing and most of all walking alongside each other through it all.
Leader or not, as Jesus found out, sometimes the approach of being genuine and real — of telling the truth and living in honest engagement with one another –requires a pretty steep sacrifice.
The risk of working together to find the balance, though, can result in some moments of pure beauty, when armfuls of tulips and even life-transforming redemption help us remind each other of God’s persistent engagement that will never let us go.