New Pastor's Promise

“Hi, I’m your new pastor! Don’t worry, I’m going to let you down. I’m going to disappoint you. I’m going to make a mess of things. I will not live up to your expectations.”

That’s about all I can really tell you as your newest pastor. We don’t know each other and don’t really know what to expect from one another. Regardless of our intentions, my arrival in your community by definition upsets the apple cart. It implies change.

Just in case you did not know, I am not a woman, as was your previous pastor. Some of you will be disappointed that I am not Latino as was one of your pastors. Some will be disappointed that I am not Anglo enough, not Native American enough, not Brazilian enough, not good-looking enough, not Southern enough, not mountain enough, not attached enough to American sports, gardening, fishing, or hunting. Some will be disappointed with my political leanings. Some with differences in how I interpret following Jesus, Scripture, or popular Christian theology.

Over the years, I’ve been told I focus too much on Jesus, I don’t know Jesus, I talk too much about the Bible, I’ve never read the Bible, I talk too much about social issues, I don’t talk enough about hell, I push too hard, I don’t push hard enough, and “That’s not what my grandmother taught me!” When pressed, we disagree on many things. We would not be human, otherwise. A former colleague told me, “If two of us agree on everything, one of us is superfluous.”

We come together from very different backgrounds and experiences. I took up residence here at my 42nd address. Some of you were born within 5 miles of where you now live. I’ve heard comments about traffic in Morganton or Hickory, but I learned to drive in São Paulo, population 16 million and counting. I’ve driven in Mexico City, Memphis, Chattanooga, Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth, Atlanta, Recife, Belo Horizonte, Porto Alegre, Richmond, Birmingham, Charlotte, DC, and the foothills of the Blue Ridge across rural Virginia.

I grew up speaking English and Portuguese, but also hearing TV actors speaking their native languages of Spanish, French, German, and Italian with no attempts at interpreting. I’ve studied 11 languages, with a bit of ASL and computer languages. That impacts the way I think and process. Hebrew, Aramaic, and Ugaritic do not code their verbs in relation to past, present, and future. Computer language has no latitude for secondary interpretation. In Spanish, mañana mainly means “not now,” while American English wants much more precision for time-related expectations. Brazilian Portuguese has 24 verbal tenses and 14 vowel sounds. Biblical Hebrew had 24 consonants and no written vowels.

I’ve never had two jobs sharing expectations, goals, skill requirements, or much similarity in what my day-to-day activities. For three weeks I was an ordained Baptist minister, training as a local UMC pastor, and supply preaching for a Lutheran pastor in a Latino congregation of a Presbyterian Church.

Over the course of my professional ministry, I have served as minister of music, summer missionary, interpreter, church planter, ethnic liaison among 14 ethnic congregations, theological education by extension professor, seminary theology theology professor, theological education by extension program coordinator, writer, pastor, preacher, evangelist, pastor of a Latino congregation within an Anglo church, Provisional Elder, Elder in Full Connection, lay servant class teacher, and interpreter for the UMC General Conference and the WNCC Annual Conference meetings.

I bring a host of experience to our relationship. It includes 36 years of preaching in 3 languages, 3 countries, and 14 states. It includes pastoral ministry to people of 14 nationalities within a single congregation. It contains a very broad sampling of experience in a hosts of contexts with necessarily different applications of the same gospel of Jesus.

While I have learned much from very diverse ministry contexts, I do not know you and this context of ministry. I have to learn. I’m good at learning names, but that is a far cry from what makes you tick, your priorities, deeply-held values, the cultural lingo you use without a second thought, and your shared history in this place. I am an outsider. I will always be an outsider. There is no single culture in which I have been and remained immersed.

I will make plenty of cultural mistakes around and with you. I will speak too long on one subject, miss the nuance of what you are telling me, misinterpret cultural cues you take for granted, and fail to recognize the importance you give to traditions, places, titles, relationships, and ways of living and being. I will disappoint you. I will let you down. I will not meet your expectations.

On the other hand, I intend to move past those barriers. I will do my best to get to know you and become part of your community. Along the way, we will expand each other’s understandings of the world, church, and what it means to be God’s people on a mission for the transformation of the world. I will love you, even as you are, no matter who you are, where you are from, your occupation, your family relationships, your preferences, or your understandings of the world.

We are going to disagree. Disagreement is a requirement for growth. We don’t have to do it disagreeably. The disciples seem to have constantly disagreed with Jesus. They tried to correct him on more than one occasion. They all eventually betrayed, denied, or abandoned him, but Jesus did not make that justify writing them off as failed experiments. Love bound them together much more strongly than agreeing on issues and practices, than failing to follow through, than living up to basic expectations.

Often, you will have something to teach me. I will have things to teach you. Life with Christ, after all, is a journey of learning, change, and transformation as witnessed in the very closest of his disciples. Peter was still learning from Jesus in chapters 10 and 15 of Acts, long after Jesus’ resurrection and assumption.

That gets to the heart of my promise to you. I will disappoint you. We will miscommunicate. I promise to engage you, who you are, and what you have to say. I will seek to contribute as we focus together on following Jesus. The gospel of Jesus is not self-centered. It is not consumeristic. It is not about our getting and remaining comfortable. It is not about returning to a golden age now past. It calls us to embody the redirection of Micah 6:8, “Yahweh requires of you that you do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God.” Jesus summed that up into, “Love one another as I have loved you.” John Wesley couched it in three simple rules, “Do good. Do no harm. Stay in love with God.”

I promise never to seek to do you harm. I promise to act to do good. I promise to stay in love with God and live together with you in that purpose. I can’t describe well what that will look like, but I can tell you it will look like love—that it will look like living under God’s Reign with Christ Jesus. I look forward to our journey together into a growing fullness of God’s Reign in our lives.

“Not that I have already arrived or reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.” – Philippians 3:12



— ©Copyright 2025, Christopher B. Harbin 



http://www.sermonsearch.com/contributors/104427/

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