ONE CAN NEVER KNOW how delicately balanced a long-term truce is until its equilibrium is shattered by the weight of a straw, a straw that lands as if it were a ten-pound hammer.
In a church I served, the straw was a few kids wearing ball caps in the worship service.
The church was a hundred years old in a town barely older. Both showed their age. But the town and the church stood as landmarks of human determination to beat a living out of poor soil and bad weather. These people were tough. They put up with a lot to live there, and generally they put up with a lot from each other. Their main prejudice was against disingenuousness. The rule was, “Don’t act like one of us if you ain’t.” People who moved in and right away bought fancy western clothes didn’t last long.
I grew up in big cities and preached in a dark gray suit that would have worked in Boston. Yet it was not uncommon when calling on older people in the congregation—lifelong, cow-punching Montanans—for them to say to me, “You’re just like one of our kids.” I didn’t look like their kids, I didn’t talk like their kids, but apparently there was something about me that reflected the place’s ethos more deeply than clothing or language.
I learned that I could talk about things they talked about only if I knew something about what they were calking about; otherwise, I should ask polite questions or keep my mouth shut. Once they figured out I was a good fly-fisherman, they enjoyed sermon illustrations from fishing, but I never tried illustrations from hunting.
I learned about my new culture’s antipathy toward disingenuousness at a potluck supper following my candidating sermon. I was sitting at a table with several men who started talking about chain saws. I offered some opinions about the nasty beasts. One of the men in the group glared at me, laughed, and said, “Hey, listen to the preacher talk about chain saws.”
I answered his challenge with a simple statement of the truth: “I cut and sold twelve cords of firewood to pay for my chain saw, and I’ve cut wood to heat our home for the last three winters.”
“Then you do know what you’re talking about,” he said. He was pleased with my answer, and I rejoined the conversation on equal terms; he and I remained on excellent terms.
Through the years, the insight held up: People didn’t care who moved in, where they were from, what they did, how they dressed, or how they talked as long as it was genuine. Sexism wasn’t nearly as big a problem here as I’d seen it in more urbane areas of the country. In this town the women had worked side by side with the men for generations simply for survival. Our congressional district elected the first woman to Congress, Jeanette Rankin. She distinguished herself by being the only member of Congress to vote against entering World War I and World War II.
So when some home-grown high school kids took the Sunday morning offering wearing cut-off sweat pants and T-shirts ripped halfway up, no one said a thing. It was football clothing. High school sports is god in little Montana towns, so even though the dress seemed inappropriate, wearing football regalia made cultural sense. It made us feel proud to be so open to high school kids. Looking back, I think we were affirming football, not openness to kids.
The parents of the boys thought the whole thing was great; so did I. So when the mom, the church pianist, came Co me one Sunday morning right before the service and said, “I hope you don’t mind if the boys wear hats in church today. They got in late from the game last night, and they didn’t wake up in time to take showers, so their hair is all messed up,” I shrugged my shoulders. Montana schools are so far apart that it is not uncommon for teams to travel six hours to a contest. The boys hadn’t gotten in until 3:30 in the morning. A lot of kids in athletics don’t make it to church at all during the sports seasons; I figured it was better to have them in church with caps on than not at all. I respected the family’s desire for the boys to be in church.
Thinking back on what they’d worn in the past, I said to their mom, “I don’t see why it should be a problem.”
When I entered the sanctuary, I saw the boys—wearing nice clothes and ball caps. The service went fine, and I didn’t hear a word from anyone about it. Naturally, the boys wore their caps in church the next week and the next.… It took a month before the sheep began to bleat:
“I wish the boys wouldn’t wear hats in church.”
“Pastor, do you think the boys should be wearing hats in church?”
I consistently defended the boys with passive responses: “It’s just good to have them in church. Hats aren’t such a big deal.” That would end the conversation.
This pattern continued for about four months. In the early stages, we probably thought the ball-cap issue was nothing but a rough spot that would smooth out. Though the church (and the town) barely survived bitter fights in the ’60s and ’70s, during my nine years of ministry we enjoyed growth and peace. We knew “how very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity!” (Ps. 133:1). We thought the days of mistrust and division were over. We saw nothing but blue skies and good times ahead, while pockets of resentment stacked up like heaps of dry tinder around our feet. The steel struck the flint in an unexpected way.
Killing frost
It was a clear, cool Sunday morning in July. The sun warmed the earth and the water in the Bitterroot River as the congregation gathered for worship, anticipating our annual river baptism and potluck picnic afterward. While the rest of the nation steamed and sweated, we enjoyed our typical cool evenings and warm days with low humidity, hoping against hope that our tomatoes would ripen before the killing frost around Labor Day. I suppose the biggest thing on most of our minds was potato salad.
While I was in the back room with the accompanists, making last-minute preparations for worship, a man in his mid-twenties, an East Coast out-of-towner with a shaggy mane and a fast motorcycle, walked from the rear of the sanctuary where he was seated to the front where the boys were seated. He asked them to remove their hats out of respect for the house of God.
This man, who attended worship regularly, was loved by everyone. I called him “Twinkle Man” because he distributed Hostess products to valley grocers to support himself as he pursued graduate studies at the University of Montana.
The boys, unaccustomed to taking orders from anyone, refused. He insisted. They balked. The stepfather of one of the boys came up and silently placed his own hat on his head and sat by the boys. This ended the confrontation.
When I entered the sanctuary seconds later, I noticed the dad sitting next to the boys wearing a cap. I didn’t think much of it. The service went as usual. I thought the sermon was pretty good, but I realize now that no one was listening. At the end of the service, as the boys’ parents came through the line, they said, “The boys shouldn’t have been treated that way,” as if I knew what had happened.
The stepfather, who had pulled off ball-cap solidarity resistance, said essentially the same thing and mentioned something about the guy who’d perpetrated the injustice. Others said, “We’re glad the young man confronted them.” So when the Twinkie Man came by, I asked if we could talk.
He told me what he’d done, and I was mad at him for it. I defended the boys’ right to wear hats in church. He said it wasn’t right for the boys to wear hats in the house of God, especially since their doing so offended older members. I told him I didn’t think they had offended anyone. He disagreed.
I still believed the situation would resolve itself. After all, the church had shown itself open to many people—they loved the Twinkie Man. The boys were from a key family in the church. Why wouldn’t the little game eventually lose inertia? Didn’t we all love each other?
Hats of rebellion
The next week the comments against the ball caps started coming in like high-and-tight fastballs. So I wrote a letter to the congregation. I defended the boys’ right to wear hats in church from Paul’s letter to the Galatian church. From my perspective the boys were simply exercising their freedom in Christ. I thought about Paul’s admonition to the Corinthian church not to offend fellow Christians and the importance of not making the gospel incomprehensible to local culture, but I dismissed it. I was in the mood to be a hero, and I was afraid of the family. If that sounds like a contradiction, it is; I thought if the church could cut the kids a little New Testament slack, everything would settle down.
As I reread that letter today, it sounds like NRA or ACLU rhetoric. The substance of my letter went as follows:
Do we really want to go back to dress codes? Where will it end? If we start to take away people’s freedom about something like a hat, what about when people start demanding that women wear dresses? Or that men must wear coats and ties? Don’t laugh. If we take away freedom and begin with dress codes, where will it end?
We can’t let an issue like hats in worship divide this church and stop our work; the times are too dangerous, Christian faith is too rare, churches around us are dying, and people in our community (some of whom wear ball caps) need to hear the Good News. After all, someday the kid who comes to church with a ball cap eager to hear the gospel might be your child or your grandchild.
The congregation said little about the letter. One man, whom I’d baptized in the Bitterroot River with his cowboy boots on, had the guts to come to me and explain that for a man to wear a hat in church just wasn’t right. I ignored him. Of course the boys’ families loved the letter. A family member said, “Thanks for taking our side.” That should have clued me in that something deeper was going on. But the worst of it was, I was disingenuous. I was spouting off self-righteously, but I didn’t know what I was talking about. I had seriously misjudged the congregational, cultural, and pastoral dynamics of the situation.
The Twinkle Man knew, as I did not, that to this culture, wearing hats in worship wasn’t simply a matter of personal discretion, it was a matter of the profanation of worship. The men in the community wore hats in restaurants, in their homes, at dinner, and at school concerts, but when the flag was presented, the hats came off. I should have remembered that. They wore their hats at graveside services, until we prayed, and then the hats came off. When they walked into a church building, the hats came off.
For your basic rancher, a hat is a sign of independence and even a little rebellion. Often men wear hats at school concerts because for the most part they dislike school concerts. They wear hats at restaurants to be rascals. But when the flag goes by or someone starts praying or they walk into a church, their hats come off as a sign of submission to a higher authority. Wearing a hat in church was deeply offensive to these people.
The boys were vaguely aware that hats were a sign of rebellion. The parents knew it acutely. For the boys the hats were fashionable. They definitely enjoyed stirring things up a bit, but they’d been doing it for years in the church, and we’d let them. They were rascals in a culture that rewarded rascalism. For the parents, particularly the mother, the hats symbolized a power struggle that had been going on in the church for decades. I didn’t see it because I didn’t want to. The family had been dear to me through tough funerals and joyous baptisms. I’d baptized the boys in the Bitterroot River. Through hours of talking over coffee and working shoulder to shoulder in ministry, I had become part of the extended family that included Grandma and some aunts and uncles. I did not want to lose these relationships, but I was being edged toward tough decisions: What would I do if I had to decide between the family and the church? What would happen to me?
The issue became a crisis. No one called special meetings, no one talked about a church split, the Twinkle Man cooled his engine, but the tension in the fellowship was overwhelming. When we gathered for worship, fellowship, or business, it was as if we were walking barefoot on shattered glass, smiling through the tears; no one wanted to admit that it hurt. I felt I needed to act in a decisive way, so I went and made the worst pastoral visit of my life.
I went alone to meet with the family of two of the boys. I had no clear idea of what I wanted to accomplish. I didn’t understand the issues. I went with so much cognitive dissonance and emotional pain that I was ready to accept any settlement that offered me relief. It is obvious to me now that I set myself up to cave in. After a long discussion in which I pretended to talk tough, I agreed that the boys should make their own decision about whether they would wear their caps in church. The mother had insisted the boys be allowed to make their own decision. I should have realized that this was her battle.
How could I have put a decision, upon which the future of the church depended, into the hands of two high school kids? It was too much responsibility for them and so much irresponsibility from me. Of course the boys did not remove their hats. Did I pray? Constantly. For hours. For answers. For wisdom. For mercy. For resolution. For anesthesia. But nothing came of it.
I was not to be allowed under any circumstances to come away from this debacle as the hero. God wasn’t leading me; he was using me. He was using the family and the church. I had some things to learn that only something this painful and befuddling could teach me.
Finally I asked for advice outside of the community.
Eruption
I telephoned two veteran pastors, each twenty years ahead of me, each a mentor. Neither knew the other, but their conclusions were unanimous, and their words bore uncanny similarity: “You need to save the church. Go to the boys privately and ask them to remove their hats. They will respect your authority.”
I knew they were right, but I knew it was risky. I was going back on my previous stance, though I was willing to admit that I had been wrong. I knew what it really meant was that I had to choose the church over the family. My battle-toughened friends knew this, and they knew I needed to do it. This raised a primary issue chat my first twelve years of pastoral ministry had not forced me to deal with: Do I pastor a church, or do I pastor a collection of individuals?
My theology told me that I pastor a church. I believed the church is more important than its pastor or its individual members. But my heart always told me that I pastor individuals. I figured that if I loved the individuals in the church sufficiently, loving the church would take care of itself.
For the most part, my pact with my heart worked pretty well. But this was the school of hard knocks, and my inner agreement was not up to the demands of reality.
So I went to the boys when I knew their parents weren’t home and asked the boys if they would remove their caps for the sake of the church. They readily agreed. And they seemed relieved. I returned from the meeting exultant. I could see the solution taking shape: The boys remove their caps, and they get the credit for doing the right thing. It seemed perfect.
Instead, it was like the decapitation of Mount St. Helens, which erupted in my face the next morning.
Of course the boys told their parents, and of course Mom and Dad blew sky high. The process that followed was thoroughly unpleasant and nothing but heartbreaking to the bitter end. Amazingly, during the final period of the conflict, the church was largely silent. They knew what I’d done, and they respected me for it. They didn’t taunt or push or even encourage. They just watched and prayed. None of the council members forced me to choose between their opinion and the church. At the final, crucial council meeting, several council members stood up for what I’d done.
One of them, a young man, spoke words I will not forget: “I will admit that I did not like seeing caps in church. But you are our leader, and I was willing to follow your call. You had the right to talk to the boys alone because you are their pastor, like a coach has the right to talk to his ball players. You have made the call, and we need to stand by it. I agree with what you have done. I respect you for taking a stand. Pm with you.”
That was all that needed to be said. It still amazes me that the council would have followed my lead whatever stand I took. The family, on the other hand, could abide with only one solution—theirs. No matter how tortuous and bumpy my road to the solution was, I know now—and I knew then—that I made the right call.
Ultimately, the whole extended family left the church, nine souls in all. At the time, they represented about 15 percent of our worship attendance. Within two weeks, the positions they held in the church were filled. The place began to grow like never before.
It’s not difficult to discern significant errors in my management of the ball-cap crisis.
First, I should never have tried to manage it by myself. I should have handed the issue to the church council early on. The problem was that two of the council members were in the family—including the mom. I assumed the council couldn’t deal with it. But I should have let the council struggle over the issue in a fair fight.
Second, I should have recognized how complicated cultural issues are. Before waxing self-righteously about Christian freedom—as if I were the hero of downtrodden high school kids everywhere—I should have done my cultural homework. The boys could have staked their freedom in Christ—as they already had—without deeply offending the whole culture around them. I learned it isn’t wrong for people to learn courtesy, and it isn’t wrong for the church to require some respect.
Third, I learned how vulnerable I am to entanglement in family systems. My little pact with my heart that I pastor a group of individuals, not a church, made me especially susceptible. I wasn’t prepared to make a decision between dear friends and a church. The friendship I shared with the family was real and positive on one level. However, I failed to recognize the church power struggles as one of the forces binding the family together. I did not realize that as an adopted member of this family, when a showdown occurred, I would be expected to side with the family—or reject the family.
Whereas most of the time we can love both the church and the individuals in it, in this case I was forced, against my will, to chose which I loved the most: the church or the family.
Beneath it all, I was being forced to ask whether I loved the church more than I loved myself. My feelings were being hurt badly, so I didn’t want to love the church. I wanted to love this family. I was required to side with the church against the family and against myself.
That decision changed my ministry. I became a stronger pastor. I became a more loving pastor, because I became better able to distinguish between loving people and loving what people do for me. I became a better pastor because it made me decide to love the church.
But what’s to love in a church?
Individuals and families are easy to love. But if a situation requires you to love a church over an individual or even an entire family, what is it about a church that you can love? What is there to decide for?
This was the kind of theological/pastoral test only a minimalist context could provide. The numbers were spare, the building was cute (but not that cute), we didn’t have children in the nursery, let alone a decent Sunday school or youth ministry. There wasn’t a lot to love. That is why it was the perfect test for pastoral theology and pastoral love: Whatever had to be loved about this church must be loved about every church.
It’s fairly easy to love the sheer organization of a well-run place or a growing mission program or swarming youth groups or spectacular architecture. But the ball-cap crisis wasn’t about despoiling the Cathedral of Notre Dame. My church’s primary accomplishment for more than one hundred years was keeping the doors open.
The church had managed to provide weekly, public worship of almighty God for one hundred years. That was it. Perhaps that was all it needed to do. Perhaps it was that very fact that made me choose to love that church over one particular family. For one hundred tough years, that church had been a lampstand, and the risen Christ had been present in its worship:
Then I turned to see whose voice it was that spoke to me, and on turning I saw seven golden lampstands, and in the midst of the lampstands I saw one like the Son of Man, clothed with a long robe and with a golden sash across his chest. His head and his hair were white as white wool, white as snow; his eyes were like a flame of fire, his feet were like burnished bronze, refined as in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of many waters. In his right hand he held seven stars, and from his mouth came a sharp, two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining with full force. When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. But he placed his right hand on me, saying, “Do not be afraid; I am the first and the last, and the living one. I was dead, and see, I am alive forever and ever; and I have the keys of Death and of Hades. Now write what you have seen, what is, and what is to take place after this. As for the mystery of the seven stars that you saw in my right hand, and the seven golden lampstands: the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands are the seven churches” (Rev. 1:12-20).
No one had the right to disturb or destroy the lampstand. The lampstand was more important than its pastor, its members, or family. I needed to love this lampstand. Anyone can love it with me, but as the pastor I am responsible to respect its past, preserve the integrity of its light in the present, and to ensure that the lampstand has a future.
Even now as I pastor elsewhere, I love that little church more than ever. I love it more than any of its members. Hidden beneath the human foolishness of a church and its pastor as they fumbled their way forward was almighty God.
He sanctifies the individuals, but even more so the church. In this case, the church God planted and preserved is at this time doing better than at any time in its history.
Copyright © 1998 David Hansen
