The word flannelgraph conjures up memories for anyone who grew up in church a generation ago. Now, in the age of digital video, the old flannelgraph is long retired. But it did teach me something as a child that can never be learned from its electronic successors in Christian education.
Flannelgraphs were large boards wrapped tightly in flannel, usually perched on wooden easels. Mrs. Williams, my second grade Sunday school teacher, told her Bible stories with the children seated on the floor around her. As she introduced each character of the story, she would place a paper figure of that person up on the board. She pressed the figure into the flannel, sliding her long bony fingers back and forth across it. Magically the little paper characters stayed attached to the flannel.
Well, most of them did. Mrs. Williams always had trouble with the apostle Paul. He had been overused in the stories and he didn’t smooth out so well. Long ago someone had spilled Kool-Aid on Paul, discoloring his robe.
One day, two of us got in a fight over who would hand the Apostle to Mrs. Williams. We tore his troubled little head right off. The tape that then held him together made it even harder for Paul to stick to the board. But he was clearly the most memorable of all the figures.
It was as if his paper-thin life proclaimed a holy mystery to me even then: God is not easy on the people who get used in the gospel drama. But we do receive the most wonderful blessing for our troubles, which is worn on our lives. It’s called character.
Spiritual character is what’s most needed in Christian leadership today, and yet we cannot learn or achieve it. There is no psychological test or spiritual gifts inventory that can adequately measure it. No seminary offers a degree program in it. Character only comes, a day at a time, as we allow ourselves to be over-handled by the story.
Every day the pastor confronts disgruntled parishioners who are not going to be satisfied, e-mails that multiply at the speed of light, committee meetings that go south, staff conflicts, financial pressures, and rushed trips to the hospital only to discover that the parishioner was just discharged (you won’t get credit for this one). Meanwhile Sunday is getting closer and the sermon is a long way from done. Some days it feels like little gets accomplished, except the next morning the pastor finds a few more gray hairs.
The longer I serve the church the less I believe that God is all that concerned with what pastors get accomplished. One of the great things about being God, I suppose, is that he doesn’t need help. But God is very concerned about who we are as leaders of his church. Thus, the Holy Spirit is determined to complete our transformation into the image of Jesus Christ. Often it hurts to be in the hands of that sacred creativity. There is no easy way to receive the character of Christ.
Paul was rewarded for proclaiming the gospel by being kicked out of half the cities he visited, usually with a shower of rocks behind him. He concluded his letter to the Galatians by saying, “I carry the marks of Jesus branded on my body.” But that wasn’t the hard part. The hard part was that he had to keep giving his hurt and failures back to God who just kept turning it into joy and passion for the gospel. Anybody can talk about the gospel. People of character illustrate its resurrection power in their own ministries.
It is amazing how stained and battered church leaders are. Frankly, the best of us are taped together with prayers and need a lot of smoothing out. But I wonder if in the eyes of God this is when we finally start to look interesting. Now we are less impressed with ourselves and more dependent on the hands of God that keep us in place. As anyone who learned faith in front of a flannelgraph knows, the worst thing isn’t to be a tattered and bruised by the story. The worst thing is not to be used.
Craig Barnes is pastor of Shadyside Presbyterian Church and professor of leadership and ministry at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary.
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