a pastor who wants to just stop

(Purchase a print of this cartoon, One of You.)

Sometimes I feel the need to do a cartoon such as this one to show that I do not hate the church or despise pastors and congregations. I have an inexplicable love for the church, an abiding respect for the pastoral ministry, and an affectionate concern for members of a church.

Some mistake my analysis of the church as disdain for it. Some mistake my critique of the pitfalls of pastoral ministry as a disgust for it. Some mistake my commentary on community as a ridicule of it.

For those who read me carefully, I hope they understand my critique betrays an actual love for the church and all involved in it and with it.

I’ve seen and experienced church when it works. I’ve also seen and experienced church when it doesn’t. It is powerful when it works. It is inhumanely damaging when it doesn’t.

It is like the splitting of the atom. In the right hands it can deliver amazing benefits. In the wrong hands it can wreak a destruction both global and personal that can take generations to reverse.

Here is a pastor and a congregation, a collective, a community, who has begun to figure things out.

And I wish them well.

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