Optimism, Cynicism, and Hope in Ministry - Part 1
This is the first part of a three part series on optimism, cynicism, and hope in ministry.
Optimism
I found out another divinity school classmate left her church recently. Burned out. I’m three and a half years removed from school and it feels like so many of my peers in ministry are either burning out, getting run out or closing down dying churches.
Those of us that started ministry in the last few years look out and see congregations whose attendance and giving decreased for about 30 years (at least). In that time, congregations cut staff, programs, and some are now cutting buildings. Between 6,000 and 10,000 churches close every year. The churches that do exist in the mainline are generally made up of older people many of whom can give financially at rates that younger people can’t, but also don’t have the same kind of energy they once did. They also hold commitments to various ministries and forms of church that may no longer work or that started to attend to problems that don’t exist anymore.
At the same time, older, more experienced pastors give those of us beginning our careers advice, guidance, mentorship, and supervision. These pastors tend to give a relatively uniform message to younger pastors based on their years of ministry experience. This advice generally goes something like this: You’re young and fresh out of seminary. You think you know everything but you don’t. You’ll want to come in and make big changes, but people are reticent to change. You’re a bit naive and have to learn how things work in the real word. If you move too fast without earning the trust of your congregants first, you’ll turn people off.
If you do this people will leave, giving will decrease, they won’t change, and the church ultimately finds itself in jeopardy. Either that or they’ll call for your job for challenging them too quickly.
So what does work? Again, these more experienced ministers (and seminary professors) and they give a pretty uniform answer.
Introduce change slowly. New ideas take time to process, and pastors need to speak them strategically. We should speak prophetically in a way that challenges people but also balance that by working pastorally, offering people comfort and assurance. You have to find this right balance in order to gain people’s trust. As the old saying goes, “they won’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care.” Life is all about relationships after all. Book studies that introduce new ideas that aren’t too radical and discussions in which people can find common ground will create the possibility for change. Do this, and slowly but surely the congregation will grow, remain financially stable, and people will open themselves up to new ministries and change.
As far as I can tell, there’s just one major problem with all of this: it hasn’t worked. I’ve heard the advice above given countless times from ministers, congregants, and church members. And yet, there’s little evidence to support it. So why continue to propagate it? What kind of person simply believes things just will get better?
In his book Hope Without Optimism, Terry Eagleton describes the optimistic person. They believe things will get better simply because they are optimists. He writes,
“an optimist is rather some one who is bullish about life simply because he is an optimist. He anticipates congenial conclusions because this is the way it is with him. As such, he fails to take the point that one must have reasons to be happy. Unlike hope, then, professional optimism is not a virtue, any more than having freckles or flat feet is a virtue. It is not a disposition one attains through deep reflection or disciplined study. It is simply a quirk of temperament.”
I would argue that these pastors and Christians that hold to the view above exhibit this kind of optimistic outlook when it comes to our churches. They simply think that things will work out if we follow the formulation in spite of the fact that they have years of experience that tells them the exact opposite. Something about their story doesn’t quite work. If they followed their own advice, why over the last forty years have churches dwindled in size, shrunk in financial viability and had ministries stuck in place? There might be reason to believe that those churches would have gotten to the brink of collapse sooner or that those ministers might have lost their jobs in the process, but there’s no good reason to believe that slow and steady change is a way to avoid the cliff we’ve found ourselves standing on.
On Eagleton’s account, optimism is a way of conserving the present, maintaining the status quo. “Henry James remarks that ‘although a conservative is not necessarily an optimist, I think an optimist is pretty likely to be a conservative.’ Optimists are conservatives because their faith in a benign future is rooted in their trust in the essential soundness of the present.” So many ministers have been forced into this kind of conservatism over the last few decades while membership dwindled. “The status quo might be slowly failing,” they seem to tell themselves, “But there’s still something worth preserving in the present: a ministry, a theology, a building, a handful of people. Change too fast and we lose all of that.”
Optimistic pastors look to build from an already okay present into something better.
I’m not claiming optimistic ministers don’t try to do what they think best for their congregation or that they’re bad people. I’m also not claiming that I, in fact, know what would have worked over the last few decades or what will work in the next few. All I’m saying is that the optimistic outlook doesn’t seem to accord with reality in our churches.
And so many of my peers in ministry stepped into a situation that looks bleak and have to act the part of optimistic minister, to assure congregations that things will work out and follow a formula that optimistic pastors and seminary professors impressed upon us.
What I see amongst so many ministers is an attitude that develops when we possess knowledge that there’s good reason to doubt what we’re doing but don’t possess the power or ability to change it. It’s an attitude of cynicism that comes when there’s little to be optimistic about.
