"All of us discover after a while in ministry that the people we think we are saving are really saving us. It's a wonderful discovery after coming out of the seminary thinking we are going to save souls. It's the way God set up the Church: We all save one another in spite of ourselves. Maybe that's what we mean when we say that Christ saves us. Surely, none of us save ourselves."(R. Rohr "Radical Grace" p. 212)
If you were to talk to most clergy, they will tell you that when they graduated from seminary they thought they new it all. We'd been given all these creative ways to do ministry. All these new fangled ways to do liturgy. We knew more about the Bible than we did when we entered. We had been exposed to and probably latched onto some theology that now was what the whole world needed to hear.
Then we are suddenly placed in a parish and we find that we haven't been taught nearly anything that will actually help us minister in this world. Because we weren't really taught how to differentiate leadership vs. power. We aren't really taught how to be collegial with those who are not ordained. And then we find that without them, and in battling the lay folk, we lose.
The key of course is to not become so deflated over this. But instead to seek ways to find out how to be Christ to one another.
It is not easy to do when you feel you've been anointed as resident holy spokesperson. Yet that role is only fun when everything is going your way, which isn't very long.
Blessings,
Ed
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