If you’ve ever seen a Steve Jobs keynote, you know he’s famous for his, “One more thing…” line. It’s usually reserved for the end of the presentation, when he unveils Apple’s latest game-changer.

In my case, it’s when I publish a blog post and then a little while later (could be thirty minutes, could be a few hours) I think of something that would’ve fit perfectly.

But it’s too late to go back and edit the original post, because several people have already read it and may not realize I’ve updated it. So here’s my one more thing.

Yesterday I wrote about pastors and the pedestals we put them on, and specifically Rick Warren and a statement he tweeted. If you haven’t read that post yet, go ahead and do yourself a favor and click on over. Don’t worry – this post will still be here when you’re finished.

Anyways, a few hours after publishing that post, it dawned on me I’d forgotten a rather interesting subject. A subject that fits right in with yesterday’s post.

Pastoral Distance.

Apparently, many moons ago someone thought that if a pastor shared too much of his personal life, his parishioners would lose respect in him and no longer submit to his pastoral authority, so they came up with the idea of pastoral distance (AKA ministerial distance, ministerial gap, pastoral gap). Here’s how it works: you, as a pastor, must do everything possible to prevent your congregation from losing respect for you, because if your congregation no longer respects you, how could you speak into their lives, instruct them, etc.? So, the best way to avoid all this is to distance yourself from your congregation by doing two things:

• When preaching/teaching, don’t use negative personal examples (i.e. past or current struggles). You must appear as some sort of super-Christian, otherwise, you will lose credibility with your parishioners.
• Don’t allow parishioners to get too close, or get to know you too well, otherwise they will see your flaws and lose respect for you.

According to several pastors I’ve talked to (across several denominations), this idea is not only encouraged, it is taught at several denominationally sponsored colleges and seminaries.

Because surely no one wants to hear that their pastor has a past or that he has struggles of his own!

Give me a break!

Look, if your testimony is that God put you in a family that raised you properly, which led to you never going through “major” sins and the worst thing you’ve ever done is forget to read your Bible for a few days, that’s GREAT and YOU SHOULD SHARE IT to show people that if you trust God, he will protect you from making bad decisions and screwing up your life!!

BUT – if you do have a past, or if you are currently struggling with something (which isn’t always sinful), USE THOSE EXPERIENCES IN YOUR MINISTRY!! Don’t hide them – embrace the fact that God has delivered you from something.

So yesterday, Rick Warren (pastor of Saddleback Church and author of several bestselling books including The Purpose Driven Life) rocked the Twitterverse with the following tweet:

I challenge any church in America to match the spiritual maturity, godliness & commitment of any 500 members of Saddleback.

Okay, so “rocked” may not have been the best word. Sure, there’s a few disgruntled tweeters and bloggers who’ve latched onto this and there’s those who’ve replied to Warren in a respectful, sometimes even humorous, way, but for the most part, it either went by unnoticed, or people just don’t care.

It also doesn’t hurt that Rick Warren removed the offending tweet. He has since replaced it with……

For 30 yrs our plan was to turn spectators into participators,consumers to contributors,an audience into an army.It worked!

Which leads me to think his original tweet was a touche of sorts.

I.E., Google “Rick Warren” and see what you get.

Sure, there’s plenty of sites that are harmless, but there’s also a plethora of sites demonizing Warren, Saddleback, his books, etc. On top of that are all the books and magazine articles that have been written in opposition to Warren and his books and ministries. And even if the good outweighs the bad by ten-to-one, it always seems as if the bad is more prevalent because they’re usually the loudest.

I’ll be blunt – when you add it all up, I wouldn’t have made it thirty years without saying something publicly.

I can see it now; maybe Rick Googled his own name (big mistake if you’re famous) or maybe he was confronted at lunch by a KJV-only fundamentalist. Whatever the situation was, I’m not justifying Warren’s tweet. I’m simply stating I can understand. When someone says or writes something bad about you, especially when that someone claims to be in your family (Christian), it hurts. Which brings me to two points:

1. Christians (especially Western Christians) are some of the ugliest people in the world. As Gandhi once said, “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”
2. Questioning Rick Warren on his tweet is one thing, but I saw people BASHING him over that tweet – people who have Rick Warren quotes and retweets in their Twitter timelines. It seems that we put pastors on pedestals not because we think they deserve a place of honor, but so we can tear them down the first chance we get.

Why?

Where in the Bible does it say that pastors are called to a higher standard of living? James 3:1 talks about teaching, but it doesn’t say anything about living. Matthew 5:48 and 1 Peter 1:15 state that holiness is the standard for ALL Christians, not just those called to teach. Yet all too often we Christians think we can say whatever we want with no thought as to who we might offend, because of our anonymity and a “I’m not perfect” attitude.

We allow space for repentance in our own lives, but not in the lives of our pastors.

Why not?

So, Tuesday I turned 28.

Doesn’t feel much different than 27.

Anna took me out to dinner at Longhorn’s Steakhouse to celebrate and also got me three books: The Seven Storey Mountain and No Man Is An Island by Thomas Merton, and The Heroin Diaries by Nikki Sixx. Then yesterday she threw a whisk(e)y tasting for my birthday party, complete with a cake that was made to resemble a sushi roll! For any concerned parties, no one overindulged – there was no drunkenness or gluttony, and pix of the cake and the whisk(e)ies can be seen over on my Flickr page.

Anyways, seeing as how it’s Sunday – time for my favorite posts of the last seven days!

News:

• A church in Gainesville, Florida is planning to host a Quran-burning event on September 11. On top of that, tomorrow (August 2) they plan to protest their own city government due to their mayor being homosexual.
• Anne Rice “quits” Christianity. Okay, she didn’t actually quit being a follower of Christ, she’s just distancing herself from many of the unChristian attitudes that have become associated with mainstream Christianity. And after reading about that Gainesville, FL church, I can definitely sympathize with her.

Blogs:

• Donald Miller’s dog Lucy is back with another blog post, this time on building and defending a love fort.
• Jared Wilson shows just how easy it is to create a rational justification for legalism.
• Joe Thorn on legalism, license, the gospel and Godliness.
• Carlos Whittaker with some great advice to parents: your six year old will not remember your problems.
• Let your yes be yes and your no be no (Matthew 5:37); I wish more politicians were like this.
• A Gay Response to Christian Pride.

I was reading the comments over at Jesus Needs New PR and saw this.

Atheism has actually convinced people that all the world we see around us is the result of a huge cosmic accident that was caused by nothing, means nothing, and ends in nothing. And yet for some reason we should be really, really concerned about studying this accident and learning about our fellow bundles of random atoms and try our best to be a good bundle of random atoms ourself (whatever good means).

But it’s so much better than faith.

Thoughts?

HT: MPT @ Jesus Needs New PR and Darrell @ Stuff Fundies Like