Stepford Priests

The church gets inundated with the sort of catalogs I trust you don't receive at home. They are full of church goods—all the stuff you need to set up your own congregation from a simple operation to a cathedral. In the catalogs, the clergy always look sent over by central casting. Of course, some priests do look like this. But the photos look stilted and a little too posed. See the two above photos from one such catalog, including the priest at right whose shadowed palm looks like he received stigmata.

I have heard priests say they wonder how those models are picked and that they not so secretly want to be a clergy model for a catalog. But no alternative to model priests ever occured to me. A catalog arrived recently with the photo below on the cover, blown up here. It looks like they slipped in a not so lively robot. I can hear the conversation in the narthex after services at this church, "Yeah, they replaced the pastor with a manikin three weeks ago...it took me this long to notice." Should I worry that I will be replaced by a microchip?

The truth is it takes people to serve in ministry. Messy, regular old people. Not always model perfect (even if some clergy could be models), but always real people. God gifts some people for ordained ministry and calls them to that service. But God gifts every person for service to others whether in or out of the church. It doesn't matter whether, from your perspective, you are model perfect or downright flawed. What matters is that Christ dwells within you and the Holy Spirit empowers you to reach out to others in love. God has given you gifts to use whether out front or behind the scenes, in church or out in the community. And for this our wounded Lord finds wounded healers—imperfect people willing to be led by the Spirit—are just perfect.

peace,
Frank+
The Rev. Frank Logue, Pastor