Once a Pastor, Always a Pastor?

Whenever I describe myself as a former pastor, almost always, someone says, “once a pastor, always a pastor.” To which I usually respond with shrugged shoulders, and say something to the effect of, “I don’t know.”

I’ve been trying to figure out what that statement means to folks––“once a pastor, always a pastor.“ Is that true? When I think of a pastor, I think of someone serving a church or community or what some people like to call “a flock”, I am not doing any of those things. At least I don’t think of myself as doing any of those things. What I actually feel is that I am a man without a Spiritual Home right now apart from my own communion with God in my inner sanctuary, unorganized fellowship with a few friends, and random encounters.

Sure, I visit churches of varying kinds. But, I don’t go consistently enough that they’ll think of me as a member. I’ve gone to liberal and evangelical churches and been equally moved by the messages and deeply saddened by how those messages are carried out in the world. I am friends with folks from all walks of life and all kinds of racial, gender, religious, political, and socio-economic backgrounds. I love them all. And I’d like to believe they love me. But, I can’t say that I think they’d love each other if they got in a room together. That also saddens me.

As a child of divorce, with a Black American mother, an immigrant father, a White step family, and my family on my mother’s side having more religious diversity than most—a mother who converted to Judaism, her sister converting to Islam, one brother who is a Christian Pluralist and another who is a Science/Christianity apologist, I have always been exposed to incredible variety of perspectives. I’ve literally been at family meals where we’ve had prayers where all three Abrahamic traditions were invoked.

All of this and more lives inside of me as someone who identifies as Christian. And this says nothing of being partially raised by my very Conservative Christian grandmother who was literally my safe space and with whom I discussed religion until she died or my one time Hindu Malcolm X loving surrogate mother with whom I lived while we were getting settled after my grandfather died.

So why am I sharing all of this?

Because of love dammit. I love all of these people who had a hand in my formation. All of them are family to me even in their messiness and contradictions. Even those who have since died are still influencing how I see the world.

For a while, I thought it was enough that I could love them in my heart and be kind and accepting of all of our variety while worshiping in or serving institutions that would welcome none, one, or some of them but never all. I don’t feel like that anymore.

Looking at the division in our society—the polarization, the oneupmanship, “what aboutism”, the disinterest in hearing multiple points of view on any matter, and the abysmal capacity for intellectual and cultural humility, I can no longer abide by anything that thrives on division. I can’t think that God gave me a heart that can love so many different types of people and yet there is no place to openly say, “I love everyone and desire for everyone to thrive”, while also being honest about our many histories, systemic oppression, and the need for social revisioning to include economic reform, a better healthcare system, climate justice, peace education and more. But this is my reality. This is some of what informs me as a human trying to be a contribution to the world my wife and I brought our daughters into.

And so, if there is any truth to “once a pastor, always a pastor”, I declare that my community is humanity. And if that is an offense to anyone or antithetical to the clergy club then, I am not a pastor and perhaps I never really was.