One of the greatest challenges the priest faces is that of preaching, and it’s not a new problem. Even Christ’s words, which were life from Life himself, were not always received (cf. the rich young ruler, Matt 19:16ff). Thus John Chrysostom gives his own perspective on the delicate balance that must be achieved by the faithful preacher.

Chrysostom’s first caution to the preacher is the description of the state of his “audience”:

For most people usually listen to a preacher for pleasure, not profit, like [critics] of a play or concert. The power of eloquence, which we rejected just now, is more requisite in a church than when professors of rhetoric are made to contend against each other. (On the Priesthood, V.1)

I would add that the contemporary listener is heavily conditioned to be this way. The majority of pastimes – whether sports, or television, or books and magazines, or games – are aimed at pleasing us. That is to say they are not in the least intended for us to elevate our souls or minds, or to have them grasp at something better. Thus, many listeners have an unspoken, and perhaps even unknown, desire to be entertained by the preacher. There is no greater evidence of this than the difficulty with which even pious believers have in listening to a homily that exceeds 15 (or 10!) minutes, even as they can watch hours of television without moving from a recliner.

The explosion in performance television (American Idol, The Voice, Dancing with the Stars, <Your Country>’s Got Talent, X Factor, etc.) has combined entertainment with criticism, encouraging viewers not only to vote with their viewing choices, but with text messages and phone calls as well. It produces exactly what Chrysostom describes, and it’s no longer confined to the professional critics.

From there, he goes on to describe the preacher’s response (italics mine):

Here, too, a [preacher] needs a loftiness of mind far beyond my own littleness of spirit, if he is to correct this disorderly and unprofitable delight of ordinary people, and to divert their attention to something more useful, so that church people will follow and defer to him and not that he will be governed by their desires. It is impossible to acquire this power except by these two qualities: contempt of praise and the force of eloquence. If either is lacking, the one left is made useless through divorce from the other. If a preacher despises praise, yet does not produce the kind of teaching which is “with grace, seasoned with salt” [1 Col 4:6], he is despised by the people and gets no advantage from his sublimity. And if he manages this side of things perfectly well, but is a slave to the sound of applause, again an equal damage threatens both him and the people, because through his passion for praise he aims to speak more for the pleasure than the profit of his hearers. The man who is unaffected by acclamation, yet unskilled in preaching, does not truckle to the people’s pleasure; but no more can he confer any real benefit upon them, because he has nothing to say. And equally, the man who is carried away with the desire for eulogies [praise; i.e., good words] pay have the ability to improve the people, but chooses instead to provide nothing but entertainment. That is the price he pays for thunders of applause. (V.1-2)

But, of course, the good preacher requires particular care from his people, to allow for an “off day” in the pulpit:

For the congregation does not sit in judgement on the sermon as much as on the reputation of the preacher, so that when someone excels everyone else at speaking, then he above all needs painstaking care. He is not allowed sometimes not to succeed – the common experience of all the rest of humanity. On the contrary, unless his sermons always match the great expectations formed of him, he will leave the pulpit the victim of countless jeers and complaints. No one ever takes it into consideration that a fit of [dejection], pain, anxiety, or in many cases anger, may cloud the clarity of his mind and prevent his productions from coming forth unalloyed; and that in short, being a man, he cannot invariably reach the same standard or always be successful, but will naturally make many mistakes and obviously fall below the standard of his real ability. People are unwilling to allow for any of these factors, as I said, but criticize him as if they were sitting in judgement on an angel. (V.5)

And, above all, the preacher must be independent of his flock, seeking approval only from God:

Let the best craftsman be the judge of his own handiwork too, and let us rate his productions as beautiful or poor when that is the verdict of the mind which contrived them. … So too the man who has accepted the task of [preaching] should pay no attention to the commendation of outsiders, any more than he should let them cause him dejection. When he has composed his sermons to please God (and let this alone be his rule and standard of good oratory in sermons, not applause or commendation), then if he should be approved by men, too, let him not spurn their praise. But if his hearers do not accord it, let him neither seek it or sorrw for it. It will be sufficient encouragement for his efforts, and one much better than anything else, if his conscience tells him that he is organizing and regulating his teaching to please God. For in fact, if he has already been overtaken by the desire for unmerited praise, neither his great efforts nor his powers of speech will be any use. His soul, being unable to bear the senseless criticisms of the multitude, grows slack and loses all earnestness about preaching. So a preacher must train himself above all else to despise praise. (V.7-8)

I commend these points for your own reflection. I’ll offer more reflection on these tomorrow.

[Most of the excerpts here come from the SVS Press edition, although CCEL has the Stephens translation from the NPNF here. (Today's excerpts all come from Book 5.) While I don't have the Greek text at hand, the NPNF version appears to be more accurate, which is expected based on my experience, while the readability nod goes to the SVS Press edition. I note that my copy of the SVS Press edition is a 2002 printing; some of the Popular Patristics titles have been re-translated and re-issued (e.g., St Basil the Great's On the Holy Spirit). I don't know whether this one has or not.]

Parish

The sphere of our spiritual leadership then extends further, to the realm of the parish. Up front, I’ll say that I have no intention of telling others how to lead their parishes. Ultimately, the decisions made by the priest in exercising spiritual leadership over his parish must be made in close consultation with his bishop.

The parish poses a different situation when compared to exercising spiritual leadership over one’s self or over one’s household, and it comes about because the faithful of our parish are there of their own volition. The priest is appointed as the spiritual leader of the parish, but that does not mean that the faithful of the parish will place themselves fully under his leadership in every instance. In practical terms, this means that extending spiritual leadership will require healthy amounts of suasion and trust. The priest who attempts to lead by giving directions accompanied by “because I am the priest” will almost certainly fail.

Trust is central to the furthering of the priest’s spiritual leadership in the parish, but it is something that has to be cultivated carefully over time. We must begin with the “little” tasks. First among those is that we must do what we say we will do. It is trivially easy to promise to do something (especially at coffee hour, even though our minds are distracted by the competing needs to visit with our parishioners, to eat, to meet newcomers). It is much harder to carry it out. How do we solve this as a practical matter? There are several options. The priest can either carry a small notebook to record such promises, or make it a blanket rule that such requests should be made via email or the next day, without the distractions of the trapeza or the mental fatigue that comes from serving the liturgy. Beware the danger of committing to too much, for it leads to shoddy work, frustration, blown expectations, burnout, and loss of trust.

Building trust also requires establishing competence and setting standards. If we want to be seen as trustworthy when it comes to “managing” the administrative aspect of our parishes, we must show that we do not regard mundane but important tasks too casually. For example, the recording of parish giving is vital. We must be firm in our expectation that financial standards be followed. If we do not understand basic accounting standards, we must undertake to learn them. (Give thanks for Accounting for Dummies and Bookkeeping for Dummies!) In other cases, we demonstrate our competence by acknowledging our deficiencies to others (“I’m sorry, but I don’t understand a thing about paving.”) and allowing those with expertise to guide our decisions without any sense that doing so somehow diminishes us as the priest. (Reminder: such feelings come from pride.)

After all, if we are not willing to acknowledge our deficiencies in areas such as this, how can the faithful know to trust us with their confessions? Bringing one’s sins to light in the presence of someone else requires a great deal of trust, particularly that the father-confessor will not reveal those to others and that the father-confessor will respond with an appropriate medicine to help with the sin. Note that I am not speaking of the specifics of how to hear confession, or what kind of guidance to provide penitents, but only to say that exercising such spiritual leadership requires copious amounts of trust that is developed only in the broader scope of demonstrated competence elsewhere.

But spiritual leadership also means that we must ensure that we are not set up as exalted figures to our faithful. We wish to exercise leadership, not absolute control that is more in line with a cult leader. Thus, we must also balance the image of ourselves as priests with our image as human beings. In no small way this means avoiding that special short-list of saints again. We must willing to disclose our specific gifts to the faithful, even if it’s something worldly like car repair or basketball rather than something of an imaginary list of gifts we do not possess.

I am generally unnerved by the small number of priests I know that seem to have accumulated “groupies.” It’s not much more than a form of infatuation, but it ultimately causes great harm when the sins and weaknesses of the priest eventually manifest themselves to his followers. Too often these individuals fall away, at least for a time, disillusioned and disappointed in what they have come to see. It would have been far better for the leader to have his weaknesses known, and to lead in spite of them, then for such a false image to have been presented and then shattered into pieces. As St. Paul says,

And lest I should be exalted above measure by the abundance of the revelations, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I be exalted above measure. Concerning this thing, I pleaded with the Lord three times that it might depart from me. And he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my strength is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities that the power of Christ may rest upon me.  –1 Cor 12:7-9

In extending his spiritual leadership, the parish leader has to be attuned to those developments in parish life that lead to burnout or, worse, the hatred of God. This happens in a variety of ways: church scandal, political infighting, disagreements over church financial priorities, and, in some cases, a parish worship cycle that places too great a burden on too few people. It’s rare that someone would be so bold as to say “I hate God,” but perhaps they’ll say, “I’m just sick of Church.” The seeds of an ambivalent apostasy are found in such statements. I have experienced it myself, and it is only with great care from others that it is overcome. These situations must be handled with the greatest of pastoral sensitivity or the parish priest will find his spiritual leadership in quick decline.

I’ll close this particular section with words of Christ that I think all spiritual leaders are wise to remember:

Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. –Matthew 11:28-30

We must constantly evaluate our pastoral actions in view of this. Is what we propose to our flock adding to the burden (whether from pride, guilt, false expectation, or simple legalism) or taking from it? Only the latter extends spiritual influence in a lasting way.

Next time: Part V, The Community.