Tuesday, April 01, 2008
Outing the Pastor
Recently at an agency-wide conference, a co-worker outed me as a minister during the “things you might not know about each other” brainstorm. Afterwards, over a beer, another co-worker profusely apologized for any time she might have cursed in front of me. There was some debate about whether the guy who hired me had adequately notified everyone that a pastor was working in their midst. (He felt he had given everyone plenty of warning, but that they just hadn't been paying attention.) Finally the shocking revelation that I was, at that moment, drinking a beer. People have some very particular ideas about what a minister is.
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4 comments:
too funny!
I appreciate your blogs when I encounter them on DiscoverUU
I've tried to contact you a few times. Are you interested in having a picture (or any image) accompany your postings?
Are you willing to put DiscoverUU in your blog's "Links" section?
i think you might be the one who's in the minority. not one single church in all of the southern states would be caught dead hiring a minister who drinks. ministers down there don't drink anyway. i was also raised (southern baptist) to never swear in front of people who are "known" to be christians.
Oh. Yeah.
My dentist knows that I'm in seminary. I knew his family was evangelical--but I'm now finding out that there's a scary undercurrent there. The very sweet receptionist undertook to assume that we're homeschooling in part to keep our kids from unsavory and un-Christian things in the schools... like tolerance of GLBT folk. Um... no. Their godparents are a couple that now includes a transman, they're legally married in California (because they were married before he became a guy), and they appear to be a gay couple. I was sort of stunned and didn't know quite what to say, and haven't since it didn't come back up.. and it feels highly strange to just bring it back up in order to correct her. But I co-chaired our Welcoming Congregation committee when we were bringing the program to the fellowship, and so I feel very... conflicted.
Then, just yesterday, the dentist--treating me for some TMJ related issues--brought up some wackadoodle proposition about Revelation, the internet and mass communications and the coming apocalypse. I laughed for an instant and then realized he was serious--and somehow my bark of laughter didn't throw him at all. On he went. I finally threw some cold water on it by observing that people have been trying to interpret that text for a long time and....
Um. I'm just here for your technical expertise. I'll provide the theological insight--at least for myself--if you don't mind.
Oy!
What's not pastoral about beer? Barley grows in pastures, doesn't it?
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