Today is Pope Benedict's last day as leader of the Roman Catholic Church. Reading the news about his departure sobered me. Even though I'm no longer a practicing Catholic, I have roots in that faith and understand a bit of what this resignation means. Of course, none of us really know what it means, because all we have to go on are official statements, and most of us suspect there's more to it than that. And yet for all my suspicions, I'm not that interested in knowing. I'm glad that if the Pope needs to leave, there's a way for him to go.
As someone who now worships on the Protestant side of the Christian family tree, I wish evangelical pastors had a way to step down when they recognize that they're not up to the job anymore. In the absence of a protocol, most burnt-out pastors either dream up some grand new call of God that will take them across the country or around the world (
Rob Bell,
Francis Chan,
Jay Bakker)...or they have a big-time moral scandal that pretty much guarantees they won't be asked to do this pastor gig again for quite some time (
Ted Haggard,
Jim Bakker, et al).
Doesn't grace demand more options than this?
I think it does.
I've always loved how the Bible talks about our relationship to Jesus in wedding terms. And like the vows Steve & I took at our wedding, I believe that my decision to follow Jesus is constructed of similar stuff: it's a forever thing, not an opt-out when life gets rocky thing.
But I don't think the call to pastor a church is of the same order. I think it's okay to have an exit strategy in place, and to talk about it long beforehand, when everyone is still thinking,
This is all so awesome, we'll never need this silly plan... For all the questions and speculation and "Wow this hasn't happened in 600 years!"that accompanied the Pope's announcement, the church has a plan for where he'll go, and a plan to choose his successor. They're not scrambling (other than a bit of media management) because the process was determined long ago. The Pope was the leader of the Catholic church, but he was not the Church. They knew all along that eventually, someone else would be waving from the Popemobile (although as it turns out, no one else will be tweeting from his
Twitter.)
I think we Protestants can learn a thing or two from this.
