Maybe this is a girl thing.
When I was a single twenty-something pastor, living only with a black lab in the manse, a church friend phoned after 11 pm to tell me about a movie she’d watched on TV.
After doing this several times, I asked her not to call after 10 because I needed to sleep, and her response shocked me:
“But you’re my pastor and you have to talk with me anytime I need you.”
I responded that if she had a pastoral emergency, she could call anytime. But if she was calling to talk “as a friend” I needed her to let me get my sleep. I was the first clergywoman in that town and I probably looked more like a girlfriend than a pastor.
Female physicians and attorneys have told me that their female patients/clients sometimes see them as girlfriends. These women sometimes share personal information and don’t notice that comparable information isn’t being shared by the professional they’ve gone to visit for medical or legal services.
More than once in my parish ministry, someone would ask if we could meet for coffee on a Friday to talk and when I said, “Friday is my day off,” she would invariably say, “Great! It’s my day off too.” And when I would awkwardly explain that I tried not to do church work on my day off, it hurt her feelings. I never meant to hurt feelings, and I considered church people to be friends, but I’ve found that there are “friends” and there are “friends.”
Eugene Peterson believes that clergy and parishioners can be friends, and I agree. But most pastors cannot share their deepest, darkest issues with most parishioners. When I’ve disclosed a personal sadness or worry, many church friends have not wanted to hear it. They have come to me in hopes of disclosing their own sadnesses or worries. That’s what they pay me for.
Other church friends totally get that we clergy are human beings and not holy pillars of perfection. We go on dates, struggle with temptations, have bad hair, and get tired and cranky. We make mistakes and sometimes we make big mistakes. The mistakes of a pastor are bigger than the comparable mistakes of parishioners – for better or for worse. But it’s true.
Can clergy be friends with parishioners? Yes. But keeping those boundaries can be tricky.
Tomorrow: Can Pastors Be Friends with Former Parishioners?
A Church for Starving Artists 
This is a big reason why I wish more church communities would try operating without the concept of “clergy” altogether. I strongly believe that “clergy” is a contextually appropriate, *not* universally appropriate convention for Christian communities, and I think that communities like The Common Table (not to mention the Quakers) provide empirical evidence for this. Especially in the “emerging church” world, many communities have the cultural conditions that might make a “no clergy/lay distinction” model work – small community, highly educated laity, cultural norms of everyone serving and teaching one another according to their gifts, etc. I wish more folks would try it, rather than setting one or more people apart for Specially Complicated Relationships. :-\
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This is a rather thoughtful. Of course, it would carry it’s own complications. Even the Quakers recognized elders as primary leaders. But, yes, the “hired clergy” has certainly complicated matters – especially in “unsaid expectations.”
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Great comment Mike. I’ve also found that this issue is different in emergent communities. With HG – less worried about appearances and protocols – I could express doubts and frustrations as we grappled alongside each other. And I consider that whole community to be among my friends – along with my CT friends.
When the pastor is separated from the people by a high pulpit, an educational gap (although it’s not true that today’s clergyperson is always the best educated person in the room as it was in the 19th or even 20th century), or the expectation that the pastor is the one and only minister,
relationships are indeed more complicated.
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As a (young, single, female) professor I’ve had students call me at home in much the way you describe being called at home as a pastor. I think the boundary issue does have a lot to do with age and gender. Good relationships and a flat-er hierarchy doesn’t mean that a church professional (clergy OR lay) shouldn’t have leisure time.
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