Killing the church one document at a time
Trustworthy Servants fails as guide for ministers and values statement for the ELCA
This is a bit of inside baseball for ELCA Lutherans in general, and ELCA rostered ministers and candidates for rostered ministry in particular. But it is important that folx know what is going on with our church leadership and how we are guided and evaluated. If you know the story, feel free to scroll down to my letter, below the photo.
In 1990 there were gays in the church, and the church was afraid. There were practicing homosexuals daring to preach and teach and administers the sacraments and colleagues willing to stand up for them. The ELCA had no actual formal policy forbidding LGBT folx from ordination. So, this newly formed church body decided to make one & created a document to govern the sexual activity of its leaders called, “Vision and Expectation.” To be clear, this document was created specifically to keep LGBTQ leaders from becoming ordained in the ELCA (for more information on this document, its creation and ramifications, go here). That was it’s initial purpose.
Over time the document has been broadened and expanded, but the emphasis has always been on who do rostered leaders in the ELCA have sex with. Even after the approval of the ordination of members of the LGBTQ+ community into rostered ministry in the ELCA, this document stuck around. And it is still largely used as a sexual purity test for people seeking to enter rostered ministry. The use of this document is terribly uneven (the more marginalized identities you have, the more you will be pushed on areas within Vision and Expectations) and has been used to push good people out of the candidacy process. I have heard stories of this document being used to harass and abuse people at various points in the candidacy process for things like: being married to a person of the opposite gender but the committee thought the person was actually gay, coming out late in the process, posting “provocative” pictures on social media, seeking a divorce, leaving an abusive spouse, being a survivor of sexual assault… the list of ways this document has been used to abuse is long and horrible.
For many years rostered ministers and others have been advocating to either create a new document or just not have one at all (I am in the latter camp — this document was created to address a problem that wasn’t a problem and creates more problems than it solves). So we were excited when we heard rumblings of a new document. Then the new document was released without any input from Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries (our LGBTQIA+ advocacy organization) or any other community harmed by Vision and Expectations. There was an uproar. Promises to do better and include more people were made. These promises were then broken.
We have now been given the opportunity to read a newer replacement document, Trustworthy Servants of the People of God. This document was created without the input of ELM, it was released on Ash Wednesday and we have been given ~10 days at the beginning of Lent to read and respond. A flawed, rushed process done in the dark has led to a flawed document (she said with such surprise).
Below is a letter I have sent to my bishop regarding Trustworthy Servants. the TL;DR of it is that if this document is a values document, the church values rostered leaders having heteronormative sex within marriage over and above all else, including being people of faith. Much of what we swear to in our ordinations vows is not listed or expounded upon in TS. In addition, there is absolutely no mutuality to the document. At no point in this document do rostered ministers and candidates hear about how they will be supported by the greater church. We are told how to live but not what support we will receive that we might have abundant life while living out our call as ministers of the Gospel. This document is fruit of the rotten tree that was Vision and Expectation. We cannot create anything fruitful from these roots. We need to completely rethink what kind of document, if any, we want to use to guide candidates for ministry and rostered ministers in living out their call to the gospel and the ELCA in the fullest.
3/11/19
To everyone involved in the process of creating the Trustworthy Servants document,
To begin, let me say thank you for trying to create something new to guide ELCA rostered leaders and candidates for leadership as well as those who help us to discern and lead throughout our lives in ministry. Many of us who have gone through the candidacy process in the ELCA have been advocating for something new to replace Vision and Expectations (or the removal of the document in its entirety) for many years. We are all too aware of the ways in which the document was created and used to keep people out of ministry who did not so easily fit into boxes of what the church wanted, in particular it was used to keep those of us who are members of the LGBTQ community from entering rostered ministry in the ELCA. It is, I imagine, a difficult process to gather the desires of a church with a breadth of ideas on what a rostered minister looks like and how a rostered minister should live to try and find a centered set of values that reflect and guide the values of the ELCA as a whole.
As we have been invited to give feedback regarding this document, I will avail myself of this opportunity. I thank you all for the opportunity to provide feedback and also would like to highlight that this opportunity was given to us for a very short span of time at the beginning of Lent; not a time when most pastors have hours to spare to do a close reading of a document that is intended to guide our behavior and replace a document that has hurt so many. In addition, I am deeply disappointed that, after being promised they would have a seat at the table for the creation of this document, Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries was not invited to take part. The voices of those most affected by this document should have had a seat at the table. In addition, there were, reportedly, no members of the diaconate involved in the process of creating the document. For these reasons alone, I would encourage the church to pause on the creation & approval of this document to give more time for collaboration and comment.
Overarching issues
What is the purpose of Trustworthy Servants?
I honestly cannot tell what the actual purpose of Trustworthy Servants (TS) is and neither can my colleagues (as I am sure you are aware, we are talking about this together). Who is it for? In the beginning it states that it is, “intended as a guide, both for pastors and deacons, and for candidates seeking entry onto those rosters. As such, it will be used as part of the candidacy process, both for the candidates and for the candidacy committee.” While that sentence should make it clear who the document is for, the entire document seems to address rostered leaders. How does this apply to candidate? Are they supposed to start living the rostered leader life now? Are they allowed greater room for mistakes because they are learning how to live within this system? Will candidates have support and guidance if they are seen wandering outside the lines of TS or will they be removed from the process? How can we ensure that there is an equal process for every candidate who, at some point, struggles with one area or another of TS? One of the problems with this document is how candidacy committees have used it, and a lack of clarity on how this will be used for candidates is unhelpful (though clarity alone won’t fix that problem).
How is this meant to guide rostered ministers? Are there consequences? Rostered leaders, as TS states, have our own guidelines for ministry and have a code of disciplinary action that can be taken for a few things, such as sexual misconduct, fiscal misconduct or substance abuse. TS calls us to guide our lives in a broader way (a concept for which I am thankful) but there are no consequences for not following many of the guidelines offered within. It seems as though we are called to do many things, but there are only ministerial consequences for violating certain parts of this trust we are given. Why is it that having sex outside of the bonds of marriage is something for which we can be disciplined but if we fail in other parts of our call as outlined in our vows or TS, such as our call to preach & teach God’s call to justice, literally nothing happens (other than the world burning). A rostered leader can ignore creation care for their entire career and never be called out on it, yet a candidate for rostered ministry can have the appearance of promiscuity and get denied approval to the roster. Rostered leaders are told this is not a discipline document by some bishops and leaders, yet others tell us that it is. I don’t want a heresy squad out inspecting people’s sermons, but why is sex always given some guardrails above and beyond the theology we preach and teach? Isn’t consistent teaching that immigrants are evil actually more harmful to the body of Christ than consensual sexual relationship between adults?
Lack of reciprocity
“When effective ministry depends upon a relationship of trust, the vulnerability of those in that relationship is acute. And when that trust is broken, the wounds are that much deeper and wider, impacting more than just the parties involved, but the whole sphere of ministry influence in the community. Since the possibility for harm is great, the need to hold that trust is all the more imperative.”
This is not only true within parishes, it is true in the relationships of candidates and rostered ministers and their committees, bishops, synods, and the larger church. And so many of us have been let down by these institutions, yet we are consistently asked to place our trust in them without any mutuality. At no point in this document about Trustworthy Service are candidates and rostered ministers told of any kind of mutual relationship of support, respect and faith between us and… anyone. The document focuses solely on what candidates for ministry and rostered ministers will do and pays no attention to the support we will be given by the broader church.
For example, we are asked to live healthy lives without commitment of support from leaders. For many of us this call to be healthy is close to impossible without the support of our bishops and the church as a whole. Many of us work in situations where one day off a week feels like a luxury (and often receives complaints from parishioners). We need the help of the wider church to create a culture of ministerial health. We need our bishops to repeatedly tell our people that we actually should have TWO days off in a row on a regular basis and we should have vacations! We need to be paid enough to receive mental health care or to get insurance that pays for more than six sessions a year. Even then, when 40% of the US has no access to a psychologist, how are we supposed to get that care (much less the question of how are people supposed to get culturally competent care)?
We are told we are to have a spiritual life, to have a confessor, but there is no system in place for us to do that. We can’t go to our bishop; our bishop is our boss. Pastors need a pastor and we don’t have one. Many of us cannot afford or do not have access to spiritual direction. Where is the church’s commitment to helping us be spiritually healthy?
This document tells us again and again to go to our bishop for advice or approval in our romantic lives. What if we don’t actually trust our bishop? What if we don’t feel comfortable telling our bishop about our divorce, our spouses’ infidelity, or our new-found love. While I actually do trust my bishop, I know a lot of colleagues who do not, and for good reason. Also, why are we not trusted to know when our marriage is over or when we should get married? I have had friends whose marriages were a disaster and choking the life out of them and they were told to pray about it, to go to Christian counseling (which is all too often not an actual licensed counselor), and to pray about it some more. All the while their ministry is suffering because their life is in freefall that has no end, and their faith is suffering because God won’t fix a marriage that is irreparably broken. At some point, we need to be trusted like the adults and servants of God we are and to have our bishops believe us that, as faithful Christian leaders, we actually have tried everything and/or our situation is such that we need to get out of it now.
My ex-husband left me the week of my approval interview. I was TERRIFIED I would get postponed or denied approval because of this. I was terrified because I knew places where this is exactly what would happen. I had worked so hard to get to this meeting and it could be all over, yet there was nothing I could do about it. My committee never brought it up. After they told me I was approved, they told me they knew I was going through a hard time now and could come to them for help. I was ecstatic. But the thing is, I shouldn’t have been afraid. I shouldn’t have been haunted by stories of people who had had horrible things happen to them because of divorce.
What my candidacy committee said to me is something I believe this document needs more of — the church saying we know this is hard, and we’ve got candidates and rostered leaders backs. We will do x, y, z things to make sure you have access to the health care you need, we will create a culture that enables you to care for yourself, we will stand by you when you preach justice or care for creation, we will give you pathways to follow when you are struggling to trust your bishop, etc. Without a two-way relationship of trust and support from our church, this document feels filled of requirements which we will at some point fail to live up to, without any support from the system that gave us these requirements.
It’s still mostly about sex.
This document is still mostly about sex. Which is the problem. It really feels like everything else in here is incidental to still telling us how and with whom we should do the sex, and is also written with an apparent lack of understanding of the many and varied levels of intimacy and sexual relations that exist for humans, as well as the economic realities in which we live.
We have members of the roster who identify as asexual, for whom the highest and deepest level of physical intimacy might be holding hands and they may never have any of the sex frequently defined as intercourse. Simultaneously, there are people for whom sexual intercourse of any kind is way less intimate than holding hands. This language is, well, weird and heteronormative. It is also why just not having this document would be great. We have the disciplinary guidelines and that’s what we need, right?
Let’s get real, when I was in seminary back in 2001, it was a hotbed of people trying to date and have sex because they all felt like they couldn’t find a partner once they became ordained so they had to do it now BUT the only people who got asked about it in candidacy were the people whose committees thought they might be gay. This had not really changed when I went back to seminary as a married old person in 2011, with the exception of the fact that in 2011 it wasn’t as necessary for candidates to pretend they were straight.
There are economic reasons for candidates and rostered leaders to have roommates that may be of the gender(s) to which the leader is attracted or to simply live with a partner before marriage. In many cities, pastor’s salaries are simply not enough to live anywhere near where we work (I currently live 20 miles from my ministry, which can be a 2-hour drive during rush hour, because I cannot remotely afford to live near my ministry). Rostered leaders often may need roommates, and they need to be trusted that roommates are roommates. This document appears to be assuming that co-habitation means sexual activity, which is not true. However, I can certainly see this document being used against gay men who live with men, bisexuals for just having a roommate, heterosexual people for having opposite sex roommates. In addition to the need for a roommate, there are real reasons for a couple to not seek out civil marriage, including loss of benefits and an inability to afford benefits on a dual income. This goes back to the mutuality of the document. Candidates and rostered leaders need to know they will be supported if they lose benefits because they got married or be allowed to have a religious marriage without a civil marriage. Candidates need decent insurance coverage, especially during internship so they can both care for themselves and not have an extra economic burden.
Other concerns
These concerns loom most heavily on my mind as I read this document. I also have more detailed concerns, which I will simply list below.
· Is there any way to ensure people are lifelong learners? Most organizations have CE credits that people have to earn. Can we make that a thing? (This goes back to what is this document, because there are so few actual guidelines or enforcement mechanisms for anything except sex)
· THANK YOU for the friendship piece. Too many rostered leaders are friends with their parishioners and I have seen the destruction that comes from this. However, I wonder how pastors in very small towns can effectively be, well, social and supported without being friends with people in their parish, especially those who are single.
· The communications piece is weird. This goes back to are there penalties for these things and asking what is the purpose of this document. There is nothing in the discipline guidelines for social media behavior, so can our bishop/candidacy committees call us our for things? If so, this can be very open to abuse in which I disagree with this post becomes this is a bad thing for a rostered minister/candidate to do becomes disciplinary action. If there is going to be a social media policy for leaderss, it needs to be spelled out clearly. Also, asking rostered ministers to have a page leads to bifurcated personalities and is a whole lot to manage just so you can express yourself on Al Gore’s Internet. There are currently candidates being punished for social media activity in very uneven ways with standards not applied to many leaders.
· TS spells out care for creation as a personal responsibility issue and not a systemic issue. If it is a part of our call to care for creation, we are called to fight the systems that cause destruction, not just recycle and use fluorescent bulbs.
· There is no call to social justice in this document but there is a call to social justice in our vows. Considering all of the things given attention in TS, should there not be some attention given to our call to work for God’s justice in this world? Are we not called to combat white supremacy, to fight for the stranger in our midst, to feed the hungry, etc. just as much or more than we are called to have sex in certain ways in prescribed relationships?
If one were to read this document as a document stating what ethics the church values most in a rostered leader, one could conclude that the ethic the church values most in a rostered leader is someone who only has heternormative sexual intimacy within the context of marriage. Then it is important that the person submit to the bishop on decisions around said marriage. Then that we are people of faith (who incidentally recruit others to be leaders in the church), then that we are people who value our mental and physical health, at the bottom is care for creation, and care for justice is not actually important.
Is that the intended message to candidates, rostered ministers, and the wider church? Is this how we, as rostered leaders, should align our values?
I love this church. I have also watched too many potential leaders and leaders get torn down but the candidacy process and the unclear and uneven application of Vision & Expectations. I have seen good, faithful people leave the church and never return. I want us to do better by our leaders, and I really don’t believe this document is the way to do that.
Thank you for your time and attention.
Reverend Elizabeth M. Rawlings
Northwestern Washington Synod
