Jonathan Martin

I wanted to share one of the most beautiful passages I’ve encountered among the many theological books I’ve read in my adult life.

But a little context first.  I’ve been reading Barbara Brown Taylor’s elegantly written memoir, Leaving Church. I am not sure that it is so much about “leaving Church” per se (as she continues to be meaningfully involved in the Episcopal Church at large), nor is it  about “leaving Christianity” (a la Anne Rice’s provocative words a few weeks ago).  It really is more about leaving vocational ministry.  Taylor is on the shelf with the likes of Frederick Buechner in her ability to craft each sentence with devastating beauty.  Ironically enough, I sat beside her at an event at the Buechner Institute in January and had no idea who she was.

Taylor’s Episcopal tradition and theology are in many ways significantly different from my own.  But I could not help but resonate with her story of losing the vitality of her soul through the busyness of ministry, and having to walk away from it all in order to find her faith again.  This comes on the heels of hearing an insightful piece on NPR’s Talk of the Nation about the phenomenon of clergy burn-out, alongside an ever-growing awareness that I am not superhuman.

As I shared on Sunday, I have lived most of my life in the fishbowl of pastoral ministry—as a pastor’s son and then as a pastor.  Given that, reading Taylor’s words has been both therapeutic and also unsettling.  Unlike her, I am not at a place in my life where I must leave the ministry in order to preserve the integrity of my faith.  I am, however, more committed than ever not to allow the public nature of pastoral work to overcome the vitality of my private relationship with God.  I am equally committed not to allow the constructions of “professional ministry” to keep me from being authentically human.

This passage below shattered me both with its eloquence and candor. Last night, I read it out loud to Amanda around the dinner table and we both wept…for many reasons.  The scene takes place at a pool party after Taylor has announced she is resigning from her parish, and for the first time she tastes what it might feel like to relate to these same people outside the confines of vocational ministry:

…I wound up with a couple I had always thought I would enjoy but whom I never really got to know since they did not serve on any committees and were never, as far as I knew, in crisis.  We sat down in adjacent rocking chairs with plates full of lobster and corn balanced on our laps, laughing so much that I spit my food clear across the porch.  I did not wonder why I had not sought them out earlier because I already knew the answer.  By my rules, caring for troubled people always took precedence over enjoying delightful people, and the line of troubled people never ended.  Sitting there with corn stuck between my teeth, I wondered why I had not changed that rule sooner.

After my supper had settled I wandered down to the pool, where I watched swimming children splitting beams of underwater light with their bodies.  I had baptized many of them, and I loved seeing them all shrieking and paddling around together in one big pool.  Suddenly to my right there was a deeper yell, the sound of scrabbling feet on cement, and then a large plop as a fully clothed adult landed in the water.

I stood back and watched the mayhem that ensued.  All around me, people were grabbing people and wrestling them toward the water.  The dark night air was full of pool spray and laughter.  The kids were going crazy.  Several people hunting for potential victims turned toward me, their faces lit with smiles.  When they saw who I was they turned away again so that I felt sad instead of glad.  Whatever changes were occurring inside of me, I still looked waterproof to them.  Like the sick man in John’s gospel, who lay by the pool of Beth-zatha for thirty-eight years because he had no one to put him in when the water stirred up, I watched others plunging in ahead of me.  Then two strong hands grabbed my upper arms from behind, and before I knew it I was in the water, fully immersed and swimming in light.

I never found out who my savior was, but when I broke the surface, I looked around at all of those shining people with makeup running down their cheeks, with hair plastered to their heads, and I was so happy to be one of them.  If being ordained meant being set apart from them, then I did not want to be ordained anymore.  I wanted to be human.  I wanted to spit food and let snot run down my chin.  I wanted to confess being as lost and found as anyone else without caring that my underwear showed through my wet clothes.  Bobbing in that healing pool with all those other flawed beings of light, I looked around and saw them as I had never seen them before, while some of them looked at me the same way.  The long wait had come to an end.  I was in the water at last.

Right before I walked out to the floor for our final general council session yesterday morning, Jacqueline Smith, International Evangelist for the Church of God and another mother in the Lord, grabbed me by the shoulder and looked me in the eye.  “Speak for me today, Jonathan.  Speak for Grandma.”  As if I wasn’t emotional enough, that flat tore me up.  We didn’t get to speak to the issue again, since the motion to reconsider was defeated by a 2/3 majority Friday morning.  So there was no place to speak.  But there was plenty of opportunities for fireworks yesterday afternoon when the whole body debated the role of women on church councils.

I suppose I should have been in better spirits after the historic vote yesterday.  The measure allowing women to serve on church councils had passed the general council of ordained bishops by a margin of 1085 votes to 1080, and then passed the whole assembly yesterday by an equally narrow margin of 50% to 49%.  It is a step in the right direction.  As I’ve maintained consistently, it is not “progress” per se, as it really is a denomination with an identity crisis recapturing its heritage. (The measure to allow the ordination of women bishops failed to make it through the general council.)  At any rate, it is hard for me to celebrate, considering all I experienced this week.

As I have stated before, I do not disrespect or dishonor my brothers who disagree with me.  But I take real issue with some of the tactics I’ve seen this week (and I’m not even going to talk about the now infamous “bra and panties” speaker that was condemned by the General Overseer and the body–that is not even worthy of discussion).

Let’s start with yesterday:

I loved it when the member from Florida got up yesterday and said, “There are people this week who keep bringing up names of people like ‘Margaret Gaines.’  You can’t bring up personalities in Roberts Rules.  And besides, we don’t even know if these people are properly representing what they think, since they aren’t here to speak for themselves.”  He was at a microphone near me, so I said “I can help you with that!”  Since I didn’t give a speech this week,  I assume the remarks weren’t directed to me.  Many people used actual examples of actual female leaders in our tradition to inform and shape the debate, an entirely appropriate move.

But Pastor from Florida, since you brought it up…I’ll be your huckleberry.  You are correct that Margaret was not here this week.  She is 78 years old, and her vision problems have become severe in the last few months.  We are hoping that she is not going blind.  Despite multiple heart issues and increasing lack of mobility, she just took over as interim pastor at a church of about 20 people in Alabama, because she so loves the Church.  So you got it, Mr. Member–she couldn’t participate in our reindeer games at the assembly this year.  She has led men, under the authority not only of the Spirit but of the Church of God, on the field for over 50 years in the most volatile parts of the world.  She has served as a regional overseer twice at the request of her executive leadership.  So yeah, I don’t think Margaret is misrepresented in that she would in fact be in favor of women serving on church councils.  We talk frequently.

I mean really, how DARE someone bring up a TESTIMONY in a conversation about doctrine at a PENTECOSTAL assembly?  I’m sure they wouldn’t have allowed such a thing when deliberating  about the inclusion of gentiles at the Jerusalem council in Acts–oh wait.  Testimony was the ONLY argument in that debate.  It is clearly the Pentecostal way to talk about abstract ideas detached from story and community, in cold scientific terms, right?  (Should we be able to have this conversation without looking our mothers in the Lord in the eye?)  I wasn’t aware that it was ideal for followers of Jesus to be attentive ONLY to principles to the exclusion of the consideration of actual persons.

I don’t think I’ve ever heard a speaker protest the use of personal examples and testimonies on the assembly floor.  But of course I could see how using the example of one of the great saints of the Church of God on the floor could really taint things.  And clearly, it could not be part of our calling as men of God to speak on behalf of those who can’t speak for themselves, right?

Also yesterday, I was perplexed when a former elected International Director of Youth and Christian Education, now serving as a state overseer, called a rather arbitrary point of order while one of the leading female Pentecostal scholars of our tradition was giving her speech yesterday.  The point of order was that while Dr. Johns was speaking to the body, she referred to women in leadership.  His objection was that since councils only serve in an advisory capacity only, it was out of order for her use the term “leadership.”  Perhaps this was intended to help the cause, though that didn’t seem to be the spirit of it.  Here’s my beef:  He’s had many opportunities all week to address the body.  As an overseer and a former executive leader, you get myriads of opportunities to speak from the seat of authority.  Is it really too much to ask that when one of our great female leaders has the RARE opportunity to address our entire tribe, you let her finish without calling a random point of order?  I don’t know if he just thought he was being fair and standing up for parliamentary procedure.  I do not intend to slur the speaker or his ministry.  Whatever his intention, it just felt like one more way even in the one discussion where the opinions of female ministers are appropriate and invited–that they still can’t catch a break.

And then, as we have heard all week, we heard again yesterday: we can’t put women on church councils because it could open up the door to ordain homosexuals.  Now of course, the Assemblies of God and Foursquare churches, our most comparable classical Pentecostal denominations, have long ordained women and had them in all levels of local and regional leadership.  Neither of them have ever considered ordaining homosexuals, not even in passing.  Would that be pertinent to the discussion?

Probably these examples are irrelevant, because what this is about is hitting the panic button.  There is no better way to stir up fear than make broad overgeneralizations and cry “Lions and tigers and gays—Oh my!  Lions and tigers and gays—oh my!”  The same speech that inferred such things actually made the claim that the other side was making emotional appeals, based on sentimentality not on Scripture.  Watch this move: you slur the opposing view for being emotional, cast your own view as “nothing but the Word of God” and then stir up the emotions of people on the floor by making an arbitrary association with homosexuality.  And before you bring up Episcopalians and Presbyterians, let me head you off at the pass to say we are not remotely analogous to those traditions, but exactly analogous to the AOG’s and Foursquare folks.  You can’t pass that over.  I think it’s fear-mongering.  The denominations that have fully endorsed women at all levels of ministry AND come from Holiness/Pentecostal roots have not even considered such a move.  (for examples, see these position papers from the Assemblies and Foursquare churches here (and type “the role of women in ministry as described in Holy Scripture” for the pdf), here or here.  Note their own interpretations of Scripture.)

To be clear, the speaker who made those particular remarks yesterday is a good brother whom I love and respect, from my home state.  He served as my grandparents’ pastor at one time.  I honor and love him, and if I was sick he’s the kind of person I would ask to pray for me.  He has always been good to me, and I believe he deeply loves and knows God.  I don’t think it was his intention to simply hit buttons.  He spoke from his heart.  Nonetheless, even in sincerity, I think the inattentiveness to the broader context of Pentecostal tradition makes these statements frankly reckless at best.

The same goes for the multiple accusations from that side of the aisle that those who favor these changes don’t believe in the authority of the Bible (which prompted the 85-year old Dr. Hollis Gause to give the biggest smack down I’ve seen on the floor: “If any man here says Hollis Gause doesn’t believe in the verbal inspiration of the Bible, I’ll meet you in the state overseer’s office next week.”)  When guys like Dr. John Christopher Thomas, the most respected New Testament scholar in the Church of God, gave a nuanced defense of his position from Scripture, the response was to minimize the study of Greek and Hebrew and cling to the King James Bible—not engage anything he actually said.  Do these members REALLY believe that men like Gause…or Thomas…or G.D. Voorhis…or our ENTIRE executive committee and executive council from top to bottom…don’t believe in the authority of Scripture?!?

Same deal here, brothers: it’s fear-mongering.  Don’t say we are emotional because our hearts break for our sisters and mothers in ministry, and then stir up rabid emotional responses from your own incendiary rhetoric.  Accusing brothers of not believing in the supremacy of God’s Word because they interpret it differently from you is out of bounds. I have little patience for that double standard.

I know there are people who love me who cringe when I say such things, not because they disagree because they don’t want me to “hurt myself.”  That’s what some prominent people said 2 years ago, you know.  “He really hurt himself…That guy could have gone a long way in denominational leadership, but now he will never have the chance.”  Let me set the record straight.  The highest and most sacred office in our movement is that of pastor.  I know of nothing higher to aspire to become.  That is part of why these debates are so strange to me—our forefathers 100 years ago deemed that women were qualified by the Spirit for this high call, and those men were demeaned and derided for it.  They weren’t influenced by culture or secular modes of “progress,” they were following the Spirit and the Scripture.  Now people who advocate women on councils, who operate in a SUBORDINATE role to pastors in our context, are accused of liberalism?

Hear me well: I have no intentions of being coy about deep convictions regarding my mothers and sisters in the Lord for the sake of some hope for denominational middle management.   I have every intention to lead from the field, in the most stable and powerful job we’ve got, a job I was not elected to and will not be elected out of.  I don’t have to worry that if I don’t shake enough hands, kiss enough babies, or give enough bland platitudes that I might get demoted.  I’m not on the campaign trail.  I’ve got a job, thank you very much, and it is the greatest gig in the world serving the greatest people in the world.

So having got that out of my system for now–I am going to go back to it.  On the heels of such heated debate, It is good for those of us on all sides to take a breath, heal and pray for one another.  But it’s not over.

Thanks to those of you who have been following my updates from the Church of God General Assembly in Orlando this week.  It has been quite the roller coaster.

We have as fine of an executive committee, and in my opinion the most remarkable general overseer, of my lifetime.  There is much to be encouraged about.  But there was also much to be discouraged about and even frightened by this week.

Please read this devastating speech delivered yesterday by Dr. Cheryl Bridges Johns.  It was both wonderfully delivered and horrifyingly true.  Hearing it live felt like hearing one of Jeremiah’s sermons.  For those of you who are unfamiliar with our polity, the general assembly comprised of all delegates (male and female) has to approve/disprove the agenda voted on during the week by the general council of ordained bishops.  Since the measure to ordain women as bishops never made it to the floor, the whole assembly did not get to vote on it.  But we did get to vote on the measure to allow women on church councils–it passed the bishops by only 5 votes, and passed the general assembly 50% to 49%.  Here is the full text of Cheryl’s speech, delivered before the vote:

Read it and weep.

I speak in favor of the motion to eliminate the wording “male members” from the criteria for church and pastor’s Council. I wish to center my remarks on my understanding that the Church of God is in a crisis of doctrinal identity.

This crisis is most profoundly felt in the tension between its baptistic roots and its holiness roots. Throughout our history we have lived in this tension, in some ways we have been wesleyan holiness- promoting the doctrine of sanctification and its power to enable believers to live lives free from the bondage of sin. On the other hand, we have not followed those of the Wesleyan tradition in seeing how the doctrine of sanctification had implications for the relationships between men and women. We have not taken the doctrine of sanctification into the realm of the role of women in the church. We have not seen that the doctrine of sanctification creates not only new beings but a new order of creation- and that the church is to reflect that new order in the empowering of women to be free from the domination of the curse of sin. The holiness churches were the first to see that the issue of slavery and that of women were to be read with the same scriptural hermeneutic, namely that in Christ there was established the seed bed for restoration of a new order of humanity in which slaves were liberated and women set free. For that reason, the churches out of the holiness revival have always give women full liberty as administrators, pastors, teachers.

At this General Assembly I have been made acutely aware that the baptistic-fundamentalist strand in the Church of God has won the day over its -holiness roots. The language, the interpretation of scripture in which the vision of the fall is viewed as normative- tell me that our ministry is more fundamentalist than holiness.
We are now in a crisis of great proportion. Shall we continue in this path, veering far away from the holiness pentecostal churches?

I am fourth generation holiness pentecostal. My great grandmother found her local methodist church too small a place for the freedom of the Spirit. They found her offensive and with mutual agreement she left and organized the church in which I grew up. In this local church I was told by the elders “we sense God’s hand on your life…” as a consequence I was asked to preach and to teach.” I never sensed from them that because of my gender I could not completely fulfill my calling Never once was I told “you are a female….you don’t belong here…..” I am deeply grateful for that nurturing environment.

The local church is the heart of our movement. It is here where the doctrinal issues come home to roost. It is here where we decide if we will live lives of sanctification and holiness: in our conduct, in our polity and in our conversation. We, by the power of the Holy Spirit, can create holy, free space for our daughters and sons to serve in the new order of creation. The church is not to reflect the old order of the curse. We are able to create a visual image of the coming kingdom. Women in the pulpit and women in the board room, women serving communion- is a beautiful sanctified image of the kingdom of god. This is my heritage. Growing up I heard many sermons on sanctification. These sermons stressed that my life could be a vessel, holy, set apart and used for the kingdom. This vessel could live above the curse and not promote it.
[This is the unedited text of her prepare remarks.]

In this assembly I have seen our doctrinal crisis revealed not only in our actions but in the speech. I have heard many, many sexual images, crudely deforming the image of God, painting unholy pictures in minds of the hearers. I have heard about the shape of women’s bodies, I have been forced to watch men laugh at references to concubinage, and to women’s underwear. All of this reveals to me that the Church of God is in a doctrinal crisis of great proportion. Where is our sanctified life? Where is our sanctified speech? Where is our fear of God? Where is the respect for our daughters, some of them here and some of them sitting at their computers at home watching and listening?

By placing women on the church council we create zones of sanctification and free spaces where the gifts of our women can flourish for the kingdom. We model for the world the beauty of holiness.

I am fourth generation holiness pentecostal. I am not fourth generation Church of God. I came to this church as an adult. I came to it believing there was not much difference between the one I left- that of my great grandmother, my grandmother and my mother, but this week I have come to realize that I am in a strange and alien land. I do not recognize the landmarks, I am appalled at the language and I am fearful for my future.

Last night I arrived at the Church of God General Assembly in Orlando.

After defeating the measure to explicitly allow women on local church councils 2 years ago, the ordained bishops are now going to debate whether or not to ordain women to be bishops.  For those of you unfamiliar with our polity, we have women pastors who preach, teach, marry, bury, serve the sacraments and preside over local church boards.  They just aren’t supposed to serve on those boards.  And while it is appropriate to serve over men in the local church (since the earliest days of the Pentecostal movement), it is of course not appropriate to serve over men in positions of state or international leadership.  If that makes sense to you, you are a lot smarter than I am.

At the last assembly, I gave an inflammatory speech.  I did not mean to be incendiary.  I had sat and listened passively as one speaker after another spoke not only against the issue, but spoke in a light, flippant manner that flagrantly dishonored the contributions of our women in leadership.  After about the 9th variation of “I gave my wife $100 to go out shopping so she wouldn’t hear this speech”…and a speaker who inferred it would be disaster for a man and wife to both serve on a board because she might get mad and withhold sex from him–I had enough.  My most significant mentor in the faith is Sister Margaret Gaines, a woman who devoted her entire life to spread the gospel to Arabs in the Palestinian village of Aboud.  She twice served as the regional overseer for the Church of God in the middle-east, pastored and started a school (where even now Muslim families send their children, knowing full well they would hear about Jesus).  At 78, she just took over as interim pastor at her church in Alabama (which is fine–as long as you don’t serve on a church council?!)  As these comments were made, I could not abstract them from the lives of saints like her.  Was Margaret one of those frou-frou  women who needed money to go get some shoes while the men folk talked important men talk?  It was insulting and degrading.  And while I would never intentionally dishonor my fathers and brothers in the Lord, I had to stand for the honor of my mothers and sisters.

What I learned was that the word “hypocrisy” is apparently an explosive term to describe the kind of scenario above.  So this go round, I currently have no intentions of speaking out.  Not out of fear, but only because I assume I am so polarizing that I would not be able to really help the cause.   I do make this simple plea, with great humility as a son in the Lord–I am hoping and praying many of our leaders will stand up this time.  2 years ago, every member of the council of 18 as far as I could tell, voted for the change.  Among our church’s leaders at all levels, there is almost universal consensus in favor of this move (Apparently, we don’t believe either our executive leadership we elected or the finest scholars of our movement can rightly interpret the Scriptures–even when they are in nearly 100% agreement here).  I hope that some of them will bravely lay their political capital on the line this go round–it’s our only hope to get it right this time.

I don’t mean to be rhetorically over-heated.  There are men of much greater poise, eloquence, Scriptural knowledge and grace that will be present next week, leaders who believe strongly that this change is right, Biblical, and even honoring to our forefathers in the faith.  They are in fact, our most influential voices, and they will definitely show up at the assembly next week.

I just hope they show up to turn on a light on the floor.

To be clear, I harbor no disrespect for those who have different convictions than me on these issues (I called the position in question hypocritical, I did not call individuals hypocrites).  Those who come from Baptistic traditions, and especially this neo-reformed “resurgence” of the Piper-Driscoll ilk are unsurprisingly against these kinds of changes.  Their tradition shapes them in that way, and I am not trying to convert them.  What is still disconcerting for me is not why the reformed guys are against this–but the Pentecostals.  Let me beat you to the punch: I know Scripture should be determinative here.  (Most recently, my professor Hollis Gause did a wonderful job of addressing these issues exegetically, as you can see in his new article in the Evangel here)

But I do think Spirit-inspired and Biblically faithful tradition matters, and I’m unapologetic about that.  Women in leadership has long been a marker both of the holiness and Pentecostal movements from their very beginnings.  The strange thing is the number of people who assume that those of us who believe there should be change here are somehow “liberals” or “progressives” who don’t take seriously the authority of the Bible and are operating on sentimentality.  The truth is, as folks who have staked our lives on the claims of Scripture as much as anybody, that we really believe part of the legacy of the New Testament church is that both sons AND daughters prophesy.  We believe that Paul’s instructions that a bishop have one wife are about monogamy and not about gender, that there is ample evidence in the Scriptures to support that women were already serving in leadership roles that were radically counter-cultural in Paul’s day.

The folks who are labeled progressives are, ironically enough, the most ardent Pentecostal purists.  I mean, who has ever considered Hollis Gause, the oldest and most respected theologian in the Church of God, a liberal!?  He and others at the Pentecostal Theological Seminary, heroes of mine like John Christopher Thomas, have been calling the church not to faddish trends in academia or church growth movements, but back to the Upper Room and to Azusa Street.  They have literally made a career out of calling us back to our roots.  As Grant Wacker’s work suggests, the decline of women in authoritative roles in the Pentecostal church in North America had everything to do with cultural accommodation in the mid-20th century, not convictions about Scripture.  Empowering women to serve as bishops in the Church of God is more about reclaiming our heritage rather than forsaking it.  Their belief in the Spirit as the source of authority overturned traditional power structures imposed by the world.

But here is what you are going to hear next week: that women ought not to teach men.  And those same folks have always accepted female pastors and evangelists, as our great grandparents did over 100 years ago. I have yet, even once, to hear an intelligible speech about why we believe in female pastors but not female council members or overseers.  Not one.  It is especially frustrating that people seem so unwilling to even grapple with this double standard, or attempt to narrate these matters in light of the broader story of our Church in a coherent way.  (I wouldn’t be happy with bishops asking for women to be removed from all positions of pastoral leadership–but at least that would be consistent)

The speech I would most like to give but will not is simply this: a speech AGAINST the ordination of female bishops that says: “Brothers, I propose that not only we vote against ordaining women as bishops, but that we also remove our teachings about speaking in tongues and divine healing.  In fact, let’s change the banner from Church of God General Assembly to ‘garden variety fundamentalist get-together’ and eliminate all the distinct gifts God has given to our movement in one shot.”

But again, such things are inflammatory.  So what word should one use when describing a church that believes in having women preach and preside over men on a council–but not serve on one?  Or lead male leaders in a local church–but not lead leaders in a denominational structure?  Or celebrate a grandmother in the Lord as an overseer in a volatile part of the world on our watch–but declare her ineligible to serve on a local church council in a quiet town in the Southeastern US?  You see, I’m thinking there is a word in the New Testament…hmmm…I think it’s a word that describes what it is to say one thing while you brazenly do something different…

But for the life of me, I can’t think of that word right now. I think maybe it starts with an “h.”