Don't Make Me a Target

There's a small part of me--a small, petty, resentful, peccatory part of me--that thinks the worst possible thing you can do to a person is to hire him or her onto the staff of a church.

I don't have that thought at all times; far from it, actually. In my more idealistic moments I think it's probably a privilege to serve a faith community in such a formal capacity. But there are days when I observe the challenges that church staff endure, and I wonder what they did wrong in a previous life. And I don't even believe in that sort of thing.

I used to attend a church whose pastor spoke very openly about his view that, if you want something done, you should ask a busy person. That pastor oversaw a congregation full of very busy people, for which he was largely responsible. Burnout ensued on a grand scale--the kind of burnout people seek therapy for, the kind of burnout people oust pastors over. I left that church suspicious of such a rather rosily presented paradigm.

Since then I've wondered, in my smaller moments, whether that pastor's strategy was simply pre-emptive self-protection. I've occasionally encountered the opposite extreme: if you want something done, you should ask a pastor, or a youth director, or a church secretary, or anyone with an in-box at your place of worship. No church activity, under this model, should take place without the watchful oversight of church personnel; no event should pass, no prayer should be uttered, without the explicit "Amen" of a person of the cloth. The result, I suspect, is similar: burnout on a grand scale. And so I'm suspicious of such a superficially devout paradigm.

One thing I notice about both poles of this continuum is the hidden clause of the contention: "If you want something done (and you don't want to do it yourself) ask . . ."

Now, I'm sure churches aren't the sole domain of this sanctified sneakiness. There's a sense, in fact, in which it's a basic principle of leadership:

(1) Identify what you want.
(2) Identify what you're not willing to do about it.
(3) Delegate.
(4) Repeat 1-3.

It may even be elemental to the human condition. But there's something small, petty, peccatory in such a model when laid out so starkly.

There's a power dynamic in play: to delegate is the privilege of the enfranchised, not the disenfranchised. The weak serve the strong; the strong target the weak. That's social Darwinism in a nutshell. Churches are not immune to such power dynamics, and for that reason at least churches--from the staff to the laity, from the elder to the newer--are called to an ethic of service, something like

(1) Identify what is needed.
(2) Identify what you're capable of doing about it.
(3) Do it.
(4) Repeat 1-3.

In my more idealistic moments I might call that leadership, but I'll be honest: it's midnight and I'm in a bad mood.

I've also recently been gently chastened about leadership being a virtue to which far too many people aspire. By the simple rules of capitalism, tyranny and other such elemental forces, it's clear that most people cannot lead; most people must follow. By the simple example of Jesus, however, it's clear that all people--even the Lord of heaven and earth--can serve. And so, in those moments when I am feeling particularly paradoxical--simultaneously snarky and saintly--I pray, "My kingdom for a kingdom of servants!"

I'm going to need a good night's sleep to figure out what that even means.

Speaking of Spider-Man

I recently regained the electronic rights to my book Comic Book Character, so now I can put portions of it online here. I thought, with the third film in the Spider-Man franchise coming this week to a theater near you, it might be fun to take a look at what about Peter Parker captured my imagination at the time. The following is excerpted from pages 23-24 of the book, under the heading "The Fantasy of Strength":

What is it about superheroes that makes them endure the tedium of normal life? And why do we, as readers, allow it? If we had the powers of our heroes, would we stand for the petty meanness of the average people who bully us? If we knew our friends had such powers, would we allow them to do nothing for us or for themselves?

There’s an unspoken rule among superheroes that powers are to be used only in critical situations. We’re not often told why, but the origin of one superhero gives us a look at what could happen without such self-restraint.

Spider-Man wasn’t always Spider-Man. For most of his childhood he was mild-mannered Peter Parker, an orphaned genius being raised by his elderly aunt and uncle. He was a bookish, withdrawn kid, regularly used and abused by his classmates. . . .

Then one day on a field trip to a laboratory, Peter was bitten by a spider exposed to radiation. Over time Peter discovered that he had appropriated the physical characteristics of a spider—the ability to stick to walls and ceilings; greatly enhanced strength, speed and agility; and (we’re told much later in the 2002 film) the capacity to spin his own webbing. He had always been smarter than anyone in his class; now he was stronger, faster, more talented and quickly more confident as well.

So Peter did what you might expect the butt of everyone’s jokes to do: he started showing off. He picked fights with schoolmates and got quick revenge on the people who had abused him for so long, and he started making lots of money by exploiting his newfound talents as an unbeatable mystery wrestler. He alienated everyone he encountered—his employer, his classmates, eventually even the press—with his rash, defiant attitude. And when he could have stopped a burglary without even exerting himself, he didn’t bother. All the average, immature high-school students got their comeuppance from Peter, but no bad guys met justice through Spider-Man.

Peter learned a painful lesson though. His uncle, who had raised him since his parents’ death, lost his life at the hands of the very burglar Peter had let escape. Peter quickly realized that by his inaction he was complicit in his uncle’s death. And by the end of his first adventure, as he meditated on his uncle’s advice—"With great power comes great responsibility"— he grew up a bit and discovered the proper channel for his abilities.

Peter Parker added an adolescent humanness to superheroes that until his debut in the comic Amazing Fantasy had played a minor role, and he resonated with his readers. We learned that to fantasize about having special powers was all well and good, but there was a corresponding ethic to having such powers, and our fantasies would not play out as we might like if we intended to remain the hero of our own stories. We can hope that someday we will be stronger than we are, better equipped to handle the hardships we inevitably face, but we must also hope that we will use that strength with wisdom and humility.

For Peter, that humility meant returning day after day to school and eventually to work, enduring humiliation as well as he could, and seeking the appropriate balance of power and responsibility that his uncle had pointed him toward. He used his powers only against those whose passions could not be controlled by the ordinary safeguards of law, common decency and moral impulse. He alternately used and hid his powers so that he and the people around him could live as normal and happy a life as possible. Such was his gift, and such was the greatest use of his strength.

Of course, this passage is looking at the origin of Spider-Man, and he's grown up quite a bit since then. The adult Peter Parker we'll meet in 3 faces problems progressively more complex and more grave. This third movie should once again do what the first two have already done: demanded more aesthetically, psychologically, relationally and even morally from the genre. Let me know what you think of the previews you've seen; as for me and my house, we will buy I-Max tickets in advance.