Pastor: Initial Reactions

It's been nearly a week since my last post, but I'm working on some ways to address that (finding something daily that will encourage me to post, for example). Anyway, I started my next seminary course yesterday - Ministerial Issues - and one of our main texts is Pastor by William H. Willimon. I'm only a few pages into the first chapter, but a couple of things have jumped out at me so far that kinda rub me the wrong way.

First of all, in the very first paragraph, Willimon is describing his baptism scenario. It sounds as though it was an infant baptism (which I won't go into my own thoughts on infant baptism) and he says that it took place at his grandmother's house one Sunday afternoon. Then, in a parenthetical aside, he says,

Baptism properly belongs in a church, not in a living room. (Willimon, p. 27)

Are you freaking kidding me?! I wonder what this guy has to say about Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch from Acts 8. Sounds like that baptism took place in a mud hole on the side of the road. Or, presently, what about people in Africa where filling a tub with water would be wasteful and poor stewardship? Or parts of India or China where Christianity is illegal and the only safe place would be in a living room - and that might not even be safe! Shoot, even considering here in the US (though I'm posting from my in-laws' in Canada, where it also applies), what about churches that begin in houses or high schools? With a copyright of 2002, you'd think this guy was caught up with times a bit.

Okay, so that was my initial reaction. Since it's a required text, however, I had to continue on. Oh yea, and immediately resisting something doesn't allow you to learn and stretch and grow. So, press on I did.

A few pages later, Willimon goes on to describe what the early priesthood structures were like in the Apostolic and post-Apostolic age. I'm totally with him, enjoying his descriptions of different roles (though perhaps a slight toward Catholicism and the role/word of "priest"), positing that perhaps modern day leadership stifles peoples' spiritual gifts if they are not in a leadership role and almost lifting up the idea of how, in spite of its difficulties, the early church was even a little ahead of the modern church in terms of leadership. And then this:

So in the early church, with leaders such as "exorcist" and "reader," ministry was much messier than today. (Willimon, p. 30) [emphasis mine]

 Perhaps this was unintentional, but the word "messier" seems to connote a negative feeling. When I was young and my mom told me that my room was messy, "clean it up" followed instead of praise. In school, teachers refused to accept "messy" homework. And today, when I think of a current situation going on in one of the congregations I work with, "messy" applies - and it's not good.

So, when I read Willimon following up this excellent section that looks fondly toward the early church placing value in the giftedness of various individuals (he precedes this by affirming how many charismatic and pentecostal churches started ordaining women as pastors long before mainlines - what does he really think about women in leadership?) with a statement of how the early church was "messy", I can't help but call in to question what this guy is really saying. I hesitate to hazard a hypothesis of where this book is going, for fear that I will constantly be searching for statements to take offense to. However, for what I've read thus far, this is the role of "pastor" that my wife so adamantly oppose me becoming.