Sarah Bereza - Professional Christian: Being Fully Yourself in the Spotlight of Public Ministry

Sarah Bereza has written a book I wish I had when I was starting out in ordained ministry! She helps anyone who is in professional, public ministry consider the issues related to being authentic to oneself while being responsible to ones role. This is a must-read for every new pastor!

Bishop Karen Oliveto, Mountain Sky Conference, The United Methodist Church

Being fully ourselves in public ministry is a challenge for religious leaders. Authenticity can feel elusive. Sarah Bereza offers not rules but a lens for navigating this terrain with theological and ethical grounding. She frees us from believing that we must act the same way in every situation to be truly ourselves.

Lovett H. Weems Jr., Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Church Leadership, Wesley Theological Seminary

In this honest and helpful book, Sarah Bereza traces forms and seasons of ministry that can ring hollow. A minister can feel or appear hypocritical when the role they play by virtue of the office they hold bumps against a not-infrequent dissonance with their own struggles, doubts, or evolving theologies. Listening with a careful ear to her own experience and probing through interviews of the experiences of dozens of practicing pastors, teachers, and musicians, Bereza is a welcome companion to any on the journey of professional ministry, ordained or lay.

David M. Greenhaw, President Emeritus, Eden Theological Seminary

This is a must-read for professional leaders of faith communities who strive for integrity between their public role and perception and their personal identity and desire to be fully themselves.

Bishop Kenneth L. Carder, Ruth W. and A. Morris Williams Distinguished Professor Emeritus of the Practice of Christian Ministry, Duke Divinity School

In this important and approachable book, Sarah Bereza provides a series of helpful lenses through which Christian leaders in public ministry can understand themselves in relationship to the individuals and communities they serve. With characteristic wit and keen insight, Bereza moves the discussion beyond popular buzzwords like authenticity and sincerity, providing new models for navigating pressures and struggles as a professional Christian. A must-read for ministers and those preparing for ministry.

Monique M. Ingalls, Associate Professor of Music, Baylor University

Sarah Bereza is a highly gifted interviewer and writer. This book is a treasury of wisdom for any who follow the call to Christian leadership.

Jeremy Begbie, Thomas A. Langford Distinguished Research Professor of Theology, Duke University

I would be true, for there are those who trust me, goes the hymn by Howard A. Walter, a call that challenges all who are in vocational Christian service. In view of this, Bereza offers wise counsel on how leaders can be their genuine selves in their ministry.

Lim Swee Hong, Director of the Master of Sacred Music program, Emmanuel College of Victoria University, University of Toronto, Canada

PROFESSIONAL CHRISTIAN

PROFESSIONAL CHRISTIAN

Being Fully Yourself
in the Spotlight of Public Ministry

SARAH BEREZA

2022 Sarah Bereza

First Edition

Published by Westminster John Knox Press

Louisville, Kentucky

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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Westminster John Knox Press, 100 Witherspoon Street, Louisville, Kentucky 40202-1396. Or contact us online at www.wjkbooks.com.

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., and are used by permission.

Book design by Drew Stevens

Cover design by Nita Ybarra

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file
at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

ISBN-13: 978-0-664-26671-4

Most Westminster John Knox Press books are available at special quantity discounts when purchased in bulk by corporations, organizations, and special-interest groups. For more information, please e-mail .

For Crawford Wiley

CONTENTS

So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us.

1 Thessalonians 2:8

Public ministry trains a spotlight on us, illuminating some aspects of who we are, while casting other features into shadow. The small slice of ourselves that people see in the spotlight reveals real and true things about us, but we are far bigger than we appear in any instancelike a sermon, a conversation, or a photoin which someone else encounters us. Even the people weve known and loved for years cannot know us as we know ourselves and as God knows us.

While many people in public-facing jobs encounter a similar gap between the fullness of who they are and the slice that others see in public settings, those of us in ministry often encounter more barriers to being fully ourselves. Whether we are on staff at a church or work in a religious organization like a school or nonprofit, we have serious responsibilities as leaders in our communities: We represent faith and even God to many people. We are often held to higher moral standards than people working in similar, but nonreligious, fields of employment. We have certain kinds of power over the people we minister to and with, and were often put on a pedestal as role models.

As professional Christians, our employmentthe means by which we pay for our daily breadintertwines with our personal faith and with the beliefs and expectations that congregants, denominational leaders, or other organizational authorities have for us. In the United States, our employers have virtually limitless latitude in hiring and firing on religious grounds, and in many instances, the people we lead also wield financial power over us. While some of us made a knowing commitment to certain moral standards during our ordination process, what may have been unclear is that something as ordinary as clinical depression could lead to our employment being terminated. Even the waxing and waning of faithso common, yet so rarely talked aboutcould bring financial uncertainty.

For many of us, being fully ourselves also means that we must negotiate between our gut feelings and ministry settings that specifically prevent those emotions from immediately surfacing. Whether were caring for people through illness, counseling them through dark seasons of their lives, or simply leading Sunday services through the ups and downs of our own lives, we have a job to do, and to do it well, our spontaneous feelings often take a backseat to the needs of the people we serve.

Despite the difficulties, we must strive to be fully ourselves because it is good to be who we are. God made each of us unique, precious, complicated, and bigger than anything that paper and ink, or screen and pixels, can capture. All the bigness, all the beauty God made is good. In the broad contours of who we are and in our specific characteristics, God has given us our own ways to be in the world and to live into our spiritual gifts, including through our occupations in ministry.

We can disagree whether or not a cosmic fall has fundamentally marred our goodness, whether all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags (Isa. 64:6 KJV) means that something is wrong in our core, or whether an ancestral curse or original sin has a place in our self-understanding. Whatever our different views, we Christians agree that we are each made in Gods image, that we bear Gods imprint, and that a major goal of our life is continually conforming to the image of Christ. In that regard we are fundamentally good, no matter what we think about the rest.