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Reviewed by Kenneth H. Carter Jr., Senior Pastor, Providence United Methodist Church, Charlotte, NC Why Should I Believe You? Rediscovering Clergy Credibility byThomas G. Bandy Most North American pastors are aware of an erosion of authority in the pastoral ministry. This shift has something to do with recent history and the mistrust of institutions, and may also be related to a decline in influence exercised by the church in the culture. When prominent pastors are removed from their pulpits for sexual misconduct, televangelists are shamed by public exposes, and priests are implicated in scandalous behavior with minors, our credibility is questioned, within the church and beyond it. Tom Bandy is a well-known consultant to congregations and denominations, and in his latest work he reflects on the present state of clergy credibility. He argues early on that the crisis of clergy confidence is not unique, noting historical parallels in the fourth, eleventh, sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. In each case, monastic, Gregorian, protestant and Wesleyan reformers helped the church to move beyond its distracting preoccupation with internal institutional life, replacing this with an accountability toward its mission in the world. We are in the transition, Bandy suggests, from professional and institutionally credentialed authority to postmodern and apostolic mission. He contrasts certification with authenticity, mentoring community with seminary, probation with apprenticeship, guaranteed income with ordination, assignments with calls, agencies with faith communities, taxation with participation, bureaucracy with accountability, and church planting with mission movement. He gives practical advice about seminary education, ordination processes, worship planning and staff resourcing. The book concludes with an intriguing reflection on Dante’s Divine Comedy, as church leaders are called to undertake the journey from damnation (inferno) to redemption (purgatorio) and finally salvation (paradise). The circles of the inferno are the public disrespect of clergy failure. In its experience of purgatorio, the church begins to overcome its preoccupation with self-preservation and justification, and finds its way to life and healing. In paradise, it approximates the ideals of saints of the recent past (among them Merton, Mandela, Bonhoeffer and King), and ultimately Christ, who is “the ideal beyond all ideals.” There is much to commend in Bandy’s reflection on ministry. Interestingly, an essay that makes a few of these arguments can be found at www.gbhem.org, in relation to the United Methodist Church’s study of the ministry. He knows the historical tradition of the church and has an ability to relate our current situation to earlier movements. He is willing to name our ecclesiastical sins of omission and commission. His prescriptions are provocative, fresh and unpredictable. His passion for the mission of the church is on target, and we ignore this facet of his writing at our peril. Bandy’s arguments are sometimes hampered, however, by a continuing insistence on either/or, forced-choice thinking: Jesus or the church, people or systems, “people with Christian memory” or “Spiritually Yearning, Institutionally Alienated” individuals. These categories are useful in provoking the reader to response, and yet they do not always seem to capture the complex reality that is present in denominations or congregations: denominational staff persons are at times visionary, Jesus is occasionally present in congregational rituals, and people within institutional churches yearn for the spirit. Despite this latter observation, the reader who wants a provocative meditation on the current crisis in clergy authority will find Tom Bandy to be an insightful guide.
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