Talent Is Not Enough
Pastoral leadership asked me questions that strategy cannot answer
Part 7 and Final of the “Activist to Pastor” series
I once preached an entire sermon against a medical procedure I knew nothing about.
A surgeon had placed a baboon’s heart into the body of a child. I told my congregation the doctors were arrogant. That they were trying to play God. I was certain I was right. I was outraged, and I made sure everyone in that sanctuary knew it.
After the service ended, a woman who had known me all my life approached me. She was my senior. She had something to say.
“Pastor, did God give Adam and therefore humans dominion over everything?”
Yes.
“Did that include baboons?”
Yes.
“Well, if God gave humans dominion over everything God made, and a doctor used his dominion to take a baboon’s heart to save a human life — what’s wrong with that?”
A long pause followed.
I had preached a whole sermon on a subject I had never read about. No articles. No books. No coursework. I had preached from my own sensibilities. From instinct. And one person — quietly, respectfully — dismantled everything I had said with three questions.
My answer was “I don’t know.”
That was the moment I enrolled in formal religious education.
As an activist, I never needed it. My activism had its own moral grounding. People deserve dignity. Institutions that suppress human rights need to be challenged and corrected. Someone has to organize the response. That framework was enough. It required no theology, no philosophy, no ethics examination. It required strategy. I learned strategy from the activists who came before me, from the campaigns of the 1960s, from working alongside Rev. Jesse Jackson and studying the organizing principles of Saul Alinsky. Once I was known as effective, the work found me. My job was to identify the injustice, build the response, and execute.
But pastoral leadership asked me questions that strategy cannot answer.
Why do innocent children die while cruel people live into old age? How can someone claim to love Jesus and hate their neighbor? What moral weight should a doctor assign to a baboon’s life when a child’s life is in the balance? These are not organizing questions. They are theological ones. And my congregation had a right to expect that their pastor had at least thought about them before Sunday morning.
So I did something that cost me time and money I did not have. I stepped away from the church I had been leading. I went back to school. I earned three degrees in religion, theology, and preaching — the kind of preparation that required examination, analysis, and structured thought that my activism had never demanded of me.
Some people are gifted enough to lead without that kind of preparation. I have seen it. I have respect for it. I was not one of those people. I needed the discipline that formal education forces. I needed someone to require me to think before I spoke.
There are still times when my answer is “I don’t know.” But at least I have thought about it in advance.