Jeremiah Wright virtually epitomizes much of what we are sharing with you this week. He is a prime example of everything that is right and everything that is wrong about the pastorate in the black church. I include Wright's speech to the National Press Club, here, because, taken in fuller context, he seems much less like a crackpot. The little news clips, spliced together and placed into a political context rather than their intended venue of a pastor addressing his flock, were designed specifically to undermine him and, as he rightly states here, undermine the black church in the process. I also include Wright here because of another thing: his towering arrogance. Many if not most of our black pastors are, indeed, toweringly arrogant. I'd guess the more arrogant they are, the more successful their ministries tend to be. Arrogance seems to be a necessary component of black preaching, but it's really not. What is needed is boldness. Arrogance is boldness run amok. Wright's arrogance ultimately undermines the very goals his boldness achieves. One of the pastor's greatest challenges, therefore, is to go boldly forward while tempering arrogance with humility, a feat precious few of our leaders seem to manage.

Wright's keynote address is an apt demonstration of his wondrous powers of persuasion, his thoughtful and articulate, compelling oratory, which, taken in context of the highly-charged political attacks and the venue of the Press Club itself, were nonetheless tainted as self-serving. A man of Wright's intellect had to know that anything he said—no matter how ultimately humble or appropriate—would be used to harm Barack Obama's candidacy and, ultimately, the very people people Wright portends to minister to. I renew my criticism of Wright for his insistence upon taking center stage amid such a highly-charged atmosphere, which, to me, demonstrated not Wright's greatness but his arrogance at seeming to presume he and he alone could slay this dragon of hatred and racism. A dragon which he could have mortally wounded by merely staying out of the limelight for six months.

There’s this curious tradition of putting the pastor’s name on everything. I mean everything, no matter how trivial. Second Baptist Church of Meadowland Heights (as if God keeps score of whose first), The Reverend Dr. Theodore Ellis Randolph Jackson, Sr., Senior Pastor. I’m not sure where this tradition started, and I’m even less sure of why pastors not only allow it to go on but actively encourage it. In biblical times, if the chief priests had their names inscribed on the temple walls, they’d have been stoned. Their houses burned, their children killed. People would have gone *nuts* if the priests dared to equate themselves with God by scrawling their silly little names on God’s house. This is how wrong we are. This is how blind we are. This is the consequences of not knowing, not reading God’s word. Not hiding it in our heats: we buy into traditions that are not only unbiblical, but which are borderline sacrilege.

Pastors: get your name off the building. Off the signs. Off the side of the church bus. It makes you seem small, a pitiful man in need of external validation. Vanity undermines your leadership, and all of this name-dropping is like a severely insecure and jealous woman insisting on knowing where her man is every second of the day. Pastors: if you are doing your job, people will know you’re the pastor. You don’t need to tell people you’re in charge. You don’t need to promote yourself.

Often in my experience, I’ve found the most powerful men and women I know rarely need to assert that power. Having power means knowing when to hold ‘em, when to fold ‘em. One of the most powerful men I know is a relatively humble, soft-spoken man named Paul. As president of a multi-billion dollar company, he’s certainly entitled to be called “Mr. Levitz,” but we call him Paul. Paul never has to run around the office declaring himself in charge—we know he’s in charge. He doesn’t have to throw his weight around to prove anything. When Paul comes down the hall, the fish stop swimming. The *fish* know who he is.

Paul doesn’t need or want his name on the side of a bus. On the office walls. His name is listed in published mastheads as a matter of professional and legal course, but it has nothing to do with vanity. He is, in fact, the least vain man I know. And one of the most powerful.

Things have gotten so bad, here, that I’ve taken to eschewing titles completely, preferring to simply be called, “Priest.” The truth is, I don’t need a title. The prophet Isaiah never referred to himself as “Prophet Isaiah,” the way we do in our ignorance, “Prophet So And So.” In our tradition, everybody’s got a title. Everybody’s puffed up. Their name on a bus. I don’t want to even be *associated* with most ministers in this town, whose work I cannot fathom and whose ministry I (and, apparently, they) cannot define. Calling me “pastor” or “reverend” inextricably links me to these men, and I don’t want to be associated in any way with people whose main purpose in life appears to be to collect titles and feed their vanity. I don’t need a title to tell you who I am, my work speaks for me. These ministers’ work should speak for them—and it does. Most of these people have zero footprint in the community, and that speaks volumes. Meanwhile, they’re politicking their way toward “bishop” or something, having accomplished absolutely nothing that will last or endure.

God knows who I am. That’s more than enough for me.
A friend called me last week from a regional Baptist conference, saying he was walking along the road back to his hotel after the conference, watching as bus after bus after bus zoomed past him, fogging him in diesel fumes, the names of pastors—in long, formal, drawn-out eloquence, The Reverend Dr. Theodore Ellis Randolph Jackson, Sr.—writ large on the side of these busses.

Not one of them offered him a ride.

The saddest part about all of this: these pastors don’t seem to fear God, their own arrogance having gotten way out of control. Like Kobe Bryant, they feel like they can do whatever they want without any consequences. Like Saul, these guys are weak kings. Petty, jealous, vain, clinging to power over their folks. When I see guys acting like this, I have to question their motives, their faith, their purpose. And I have to wonder how dumb these guys have to be to tempt God the way they do, and how dumb we have to be to follow them.