I've Mellowed

I'm entering my 4th year now as a pastor and have been reflecting on how my time in the ministry has changed me.  I came out of seminary with lots of really strong opinions and impassioned ideals.  I wasn't shy about expressing them.  In fact, I saw it as a sort of prophetic duty to declare loudly what I really believed what was wrong with the world and how it ought to be fixed.  But somewhere along the line I have mellowed.

And I think it is love and concern for others that has done it.  I'm not saying that to pat myself on the back, but I found out very quickly that as a pastor if you want to try to maintain good relationships with a wide variety of very different people, then you simply have to be more mellow about some things.  For example, I have the organizer for the Obama campaign on the near Eastside in my congregation.  I also have folks who are lifelong Republicans and probably would situate themselves in the Tea Party.  Now I have political opinions.  Anyone who knows me knows that.  But I have had to shelve those opinions quite often in order to build relationships with a very wide variety of incredibly different people.

In some ways this annoys me.  I don't want to become a cookie-cutter pastor who always speaks in empty, inoffensive banalities like the words you find on the inside of a Hallmark card.  Changing my speech patterns and modes of self-expression hasn't come easily.  It often makes me feel like I've had to sacrifice a part of who I am.  Before pastoring I'd always been rather extreme and idealistic -- anything but moderate.  I was the one to ask the questions in class that got everyone's blood boiling and I enjoyed it immensely.  (It kept me awake.  There's nothing as terrifying as boredom.)  But now I play a very different role.  My role is that of the unifier, the bridge between radically different groups of people.  I am the friend to them all although they are not always friends with one another.

All in all, I think it's probably good that I've mellowed a bit.  I'm not the one to poke the fire and stir up the flames any longer (or at least not nearly as much as I once was).  But I have come to love people.  I have learned what it is to shepherd a flock.  Educated and uneducated, black and white, rich and poor, friendly and mean, believers and unbelievers, straight and gay, the selfless and the selfish... I've learned to love them all and do my best not to judge them.  And that has made me a better, more mellow person.  Or maybe not better... just different.

There's a fine line between mellowed and jaded.  Perhaps some days I am more jaded.  My ideals have faded like a t-shirt that's been through the wash too many times. I've been confronted with the harsh realities of urban life and ministry.  But this too is probably all part of the journey.  Maybe someday I will once again be a loud-mouthed zealot who polarizes people.  But for now I'm Greg the Compromiser.  And I can live with that.

Melancholy

What do I do with my melancholy? Do I embrace it? Do I turn it into a poem? Should I feel guilty for experiencing it so regularly? Is it compatible with my faith?

For so many years I heard the testimonies in church: "My friend asked me, 'Why are you always so happy?' and I told him, 'It's because I have Jesus in my life and he fills me with such joy and peace. You can know him too if you'd like.' And then he prayed to accept Jesus." I knew I should rejoice upon hearing such a testimony, but instead I felt punched in the stomach. Tormented by guilt I asked myself, "What is wrong with you, Greg? Why can't you be that way? Why do you live life with such seriousness and such gravity? Why are you so melancholy? Is it because you yourself are not saved?"

Even as a young child, I can recall people asking me frequently, "What are you upset about, Greg?" and "Why so serious?" It annoyed me that they would ask me this. And then I would get annoyed at myself for getting annoyed. "Why am I angry?" I would think, "Because you think I'm angry when I'm not."

Here I am -- a 28 year old man, just as melancholy as ever. More than anything, I want to make my Daddy in heaven proud of me. I want to do something good for Him since He did so much for me. But do I have to be chipper every morning? Do I have to walk around with a plastic smile on my face each day? Do I have to tell everyone in my church that I'm okay when I'm not? Do I have to write facebook status updates like "Greg Coates is just so incredibly in love with Jesus today" even on the many days that I don't feel like it? And even if I could somehow magically change my personality so that I was funny and gregarious and bubbly and gleeful, would I still be Greg Coates? Would that make my Daddy in heaven happy?

I don't know. Maybe God made me melancholy and wills for me to be so. Maybe the naturally serious, dour look on my face is as natural as my pectus excavatum. Maybe it's a flaw or maybe God wouldn't want me any other way. But either way, I want to learn to be comfortable with who I am and I'm certainly not there yet.

Cords of Death

David cried out to God:

"The cords of death entangled me; the torrents of destruction overwhelmed me. The cords of the grave coiled around me; the snares of death confronted me. In my distress I called to the LORD; I cried to my God for help." - Psalm 18:4-6

I just need to get it out. I feel as though I am drowning. These are my cords of death:

1) Family members who reject Christ and his ways.
2) A teenage girl in my church who gets hit by her drunken father.
3) Fellow pastors in my city who seem to care nothing for the poor.
4) Daughters who are ill and cry out all through the night.
5) Long hours, no recognition, and low pay.
6) The inability to afford a membership to the YMCA.
7) Imprisonment to sin and powerlessness to live a life of holiness before God.
8) The poor whom I try to serve offering no thanks and instead pronouncing insults.
9) Exchanging the comfort and safety of Wilmore, Kentucky for the near eastside.
10) Gunshots at night.
11) Two women in my church who hate one another and refuse to be reconciled.
12) Pharisees who prevent hungry people from finding the bread of life.
13) Underfunded and understaffed programs.
14) The need for marital counseling but no time or money for it.
15) The desire to just "get away" but no place to go.
16) A chaotic and messy house.
17) An unhealthy dependence upon soda, candy, and fatty foods to medicate my depression.
18) Sermons, board meetings, networking with community organizations, balancing budgets, fundraising, exegeting, visiting, casting vision, planning events, counseling, recruiting, managing staff, quizmastering, lesson planning, updating websites, delegating, peacemaking...
19) Darkness inside, emptiness, weariness, silence from God.
20) Mice in my food pantry.

"In my distress I called to the LORD; I cried to my God for help."

I cry to you now, God.

I'm going to give this another try...

I've been living for myself lately and it hasn't been working out very well so I'm going to give the whole "abandonment to the will of God" thing a try again. I'll let you all know how it works out.

I'd Like To Register A Complaint, Please

Forgive me, sir, for my impudence, but I really must register a complaint. If you're as big and as patient as they say you are, I'm sure you'll be able to handle it. The gist of my beef with you is that you just seem so distant sometimes. I mean, people say that you are loving and that you are relational at your very core. In fact, some people who study you and your ways tell me that you've been in a perpetual relationship forever and that you always will be. They also say that you're interested in relating to all of us "down here." And I want you to be my best friend, but you never call. I haven't even once gotten an e-mail from you and I never even see you update your status on Facebook. I try different things to meet you like getting away from it all just to be with you, but I just keep hearing silence. And I'm not the only one who is bothered by this. I just talked with two others this morning who feel the same way. So why do you have to be so distant? If I called my dad and asked him for a moment of his time to chat or offer some advice, I know that he'd drop what he was doing to be there for me. And one time I read that you said, "If you earthly father knows how to give good gifts to his children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good gifts to those who ask him?" Well, I guess I'm asking. Would you show yourself to me in a small, simple way? I would like to be your friend, but I keep getting your voicemail.

At least I'm not alone in my feeling of isolation. Misery loves company. Evidently, you've been quiet for millennia. So I'll pray again a prayer that was prayed over 3,000 years ago:

How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me? Look on me and answer, O LORD my God. Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death. Psalm 13:1-4a

Resolution of Repentance

I have heard the call to repent which came from God through the lips of people I love -- the lips of my wife, my father, and some close friends. They bravely rebuked me for something I knew deep down was a problem to be faced, but didn't want to face it. Here is what they have said:

Greg, in your fervor for solidarity with the poor, you have become judgmental to those who do not have the same passion as you. You have chided rich Americans for being rich Americans and refused to meet them where they are. You have spoken loudly and boldly against the dangers of hoarding wealth, but people will not respond to anger. People will only respond to a life well lived and messages given in love.

I have taken this advice to heart. It was not easy to hear. Rebukes never are. Nevertheless, I needed to hear this as I have become yet another one of those angry, envious do-gooder liberals. And so I repent. I resolve here and now to keep my big mouth shut for a while and just live my life according to how I read the gospels. I will try to preach my sermons without words.

Forgive me, blog readers, for being so vitriolic at times. While I do believe that the grossest of injustices in this world need to be prophetically condemned, I have not done so in love. I hope this to be a new beginning for me and for this blog which is a reflection of the inner soul of its author.

What I Want... (A New Year's Prayer)

I want to believe that I don't just create God in my own image, cutting and pasting the texts of Scripture to suit my own fancy. (But I suspect that I, and almost all other Biblical scholars, do).

I want to be set free from slavery to gluttony, lust, laziness, pride, anger, despair and greed.

I want to wake up in the morning and be filled with gratitude rather than feel like I have a hangover from the previous day.

I want to be part of a church where I can be who I am and not put on a face and not act like everything is alright.

I want to want God.

I want to share my life with the poor, to resist the urge to escape from poverty, and to embrace a life of simple solidarity with the broken as the will of God. And I want to find peace and joy in doing so.

I want to stop medicating myself with all the wrong things.

I want to long to read the Bible more than I long to read the newspaper or long to watch television or long to surf the web or long to sit and watch paint dry.

I want to stop feeling like somehow the Bible demands that I look down upon, judge, or oppose the civil rights of homosexuals.

I want to learn how to pray.

I want to lose weight.

I want my family to know how much I love them and hate how I treat them when I'm in a bad mood.

I want 2009 to be a better year than 2008.

Amen.

Broken Down

Kids screaming in the night,
alcohol, drugs, prostitution, theft, abuse, rape, poverty,
fear at all times
fear of bad men eyeing my daughters
fear of addicts who would beat my wife for money,
fear of darkness, darkness, darkness overwhelming.

Depression, dark clouds unending
icy cold mornings
long hours of work
church people who hate each other
phone calls, phone calls, phone calls
meetings, sermons, visits, peacemaking, silent pain
emptiness inside. Godlessness.

My kids screaming in the night,
sleeplessness, diapers, laundry, dishes, urine on the floor,
bills due, income scarce
hard work, no reward, tension with Courtney,
longing day after day for escape.

Empty motions,
aching for somewhere I know not where,
aching for someone I know not who,
suffering, suffering silently with Christ
... or sometimes without him.

Gregory Ryan Coates is Broken Down tonight.

How Do I Get There?

I have heard the call, Lord. You've asked me to empty myself and take on the very nature of a slave, to consider others to be better than myself, and to become nothing. You have called me to die so that I might live and to become the least so that I might be the greatest. You have told me to take up my cross and sometimes I can do this... for a few minutes or even a few hours, but then I drop it and run back like a pathetic addict to the comforts with which I can medicate my pain.

Computer games, food, soda, movies, laziness, time on Facebook, medications, bursts of anger over insignificant things... I turn to them instead of you. Sloth, lust, gluttony, avarice, wrath, despair, pride. Lord (if I may be so bold as to call you that), I am a slave to them all. I help the poor at my door, but only so much. I give him my shoes, but I don't invite him into my house for a meal. Or at least not everytime.

I've heard the call; I know your will. I just can't do it. The power isn't there. The words of your servant John ring in my head: "Anyone who is a child of God does not sin." But I sin. I do it all the time. I do it willingly and defiantly. I make a habit of it, of choosing to please Greg Coates instead of others and instead of you. And I feel terrible about it; I'm overwhelmed with guilt.

Surely this isn't the life you want me to live. Surely you want to take me to new places and see new wonders. You want to make a saint out of this broken, stubborn man, but I just don't know how to get there. I've tried the Bible reading, the fasting, the prayer, the serving the poor, the taking the sacraments, the accountability, the small group and one-on-one discipleship groups, the revival meetings, the voracious reading of Christian mystics, the regular attendance to church, the going on the mission field and leaving everyone behind, the preaching and teaching and scrubbing dirty floors and hugging the drug addicts. All rubbish. It's not doing it. I'm not there and I want to be. How do I get there?

Send me an e-mail if you don't mind. I check it quite often.