#2 Distance

As every minister knows, it is necessary to maintain a sort of professional distance.  The belief is that in some way, this distance will prevent ethical boundaries from being crossed.  Some boundaries are clear.  For instance, everyone with common sense can understand the danger of dating a parishioner–even if family members encourage it.  At the same time, other boundaries are a bit harder to navigate because like it or not, a minister can never turn his or her role off, and all relationships may be ministerial opportunities.  That is where the problem comes in.

Many of my ministerial friends can attest to the difficulty they experience in trying to discern whether or not a particular relationship qualifies as being personal or professional, and romantic relationships bring about another set of complexity on their own.  The result is often a heightened amount of physical and emotional distance, which cannot be maintained without great effort and a good life outside of ministry.  That means finding time to be well-rounded even when church demands make it virtually impossible.  It also means having a lot of self-knowledge and self-confidence.  Being without either of those two aspects of life is a recipe for disaster in the ministerial context.  Last, but certainly not least, it requires a strong and personal relationship with Jesus Christ.  After all, He is the only one who can help clarify the more confusing aspects of the ministerial life because He lived it, well sort of.

Jesus is the Christian’s model for living life so the answer must lie with Him.  He was open and honest at all times, but at the same time, there were certain things that Scripture never recorded Jesus doing, and many of these things would have been very useful to see.  Jesus never dated, probably because He knew that it would get in the way of His mission, yet many ministers will not only date, but also marry.  That’s probably the reason that the ridiculous DaVinci code theories were able to spring up.  Being human and male, I can understand personally the difficulty that Jesus must have faced in living that particular life.  The Bible doesn’t mention Jesus’ other friends, but his closest friends were his disciples, yet today ministers are not encouraged to befriend their parishioners.  Even Jesus’ struggle w/ God was common knowledge at the Garden of Gethsemane, while many ministers would lose their posts if their private struggles ever became public.

So what has changed?  People are lawsuit-happy and looking for a means of getting money any way that they can.  The church is perceived as a wealthy place in many communities, which makes it susceptible to false reports of abuse for money, not saying that ministers never slip up and do wrong.  Still, Jesus’ ministry was one of closeness and openness, unlike the distance that is necessary to maintain a good ministry today.  Unfortunately, that means that as a society, we have allowed the fear of lawsuits and loss of reputation to keep ministers from truly having the kind of ministry that is modeled after the life of Jesus.