The Question I Haven't Been Able To Answer

When I was in seminary, I took this class, “The Minor Prophets,” for an upper level Old Testament credit. It was a great class as we studied and contextualized all twelve of the minor prophets. One day, we talked about the concept of justice as it is put forth by the different prophets, and tried to draw a picture of such justice being preached from the Church. Then, we watched the full video of MLK’s, “I Have A Dream” speech from the “March on Washington for Jobs.” It was the first time in my life I had watched the entire speech and heard all of the context around the events of that day.

I remember when it was over, I was deeply moved. In the conversation that followed among the class, I said, “I wish more ministers had the courage to preach like that.” The professor, ever the gracious soul, looked at me and said something I’ve struggled with ever since.

“Imagine it’s 1964, and you are a white pastor, in a white Baptist church, in Alabama. What do you do? Do you write the sermon about how the church needs to stop failing God and start welcoming and advocating for the African American community around you? Or do you start the long process of bend the arc of that congregation? Because if take the first course of action, you might as well write your resignation letter as well.”

This is a dilemma that I have been thinking about off and on ever since. There have been times in ministry where I tried for the prophetic voice, and it cost me a lot. Also, I have tried to take the pastoral approach and it eventually reached a positive outcome, but there were a lot of people hurt in the interim. How do we respond to this struggle? Is it truly a binary between being “prophetic” and being “pastoral?”

This week, I’m the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship General Assembly. In the wake of recent events, LGBTQ inclusion has been at the center of a feeling of tension that is almost palpable at times. I know that amongst my generation of ministers, this topic carries a lot of weight as to how we see our future as part of the Fellowship. There is a distance between where we are and where some of us want to be, but how we get there and remain faithful to core of who we are as Cooperative Baptists is a struggle I don’t know if we have all taken into account.

I’m stuck in this place where I’m trying to answer that question. Is it better to be prophetic, or pastoral? I don’t want anymore hurt in the LGBTQ community because of things said or done by the CBF global organization, but there are also thousands of members with such different views that make this conversation very complex. I know that the Spirit will guide us to a bright future, but man, is it going to take faith to step out on that journey.