Book Review: The Pastor Has No Clothes by Jon Zens

The Pastor Has No Clothes: Moving from Clergy-Centered Church to Christ-Centered Ekklesia, by Jon Zens (Lincoln, NE: Ekklesia Press, 2011)

            This is the book that has taught me the most about following Jesus in spirit and truth that I have read so far this year.

            Jon Zens is a man who holds training in Christian theology through doctoral level, but, by the end of that training, concluded that what the New Testament shows us to be the way the church was to operate is what God meant, and what we see in western society is that tradition, having been morphed by various political and social movements through history, changed practices in the church to the degree that it does not reflect what Jesus taught the apostles, who, in turn, taught the early church.  In Jon’s previous works, he dealt with the difference between the early church meeting in homes informally as opposed to the tradition prevalent since the Roman Empire’s Edict of Tolerance of having buildings, paid staff, and ritual, in “A Church Building Every ½ Mile” and the role of women, which was uniquely equal before God and the rest of believers in “What’s With Paul and Women?” 

In “The Pastor Has No Clothes”, Jon deals with the difference between the early church, where believers met informally, and understood themselves to be responsible for each other’s growing in faith to the modern formal service dominated by one person designated in most institutional churches as a pastor or priest.

            The title, obviously, is a play on words off of Hans Christian Andersen’s children’s story “The Emperor’s New Clothes”, where the Emperor is conned, but the people fear speaking out until a little boy says, “The Emperor has no clothes.” The pasted together look of the front cover is further symbolic of the content.  The not subtle comparison is that the pastoral office (not the persons holding the position specifically) is treated with dictatorial respect, without regard to the wisdom or lack that comes from the position by historical (not biblical) tradition.

            The forward to the book states a main point—the division between clergy and laity is unscriptural; the first word comes from the Greek kleros, which means the inheritance, and all believers, by faith are the inheritance, and the Greek laos, which means the people, and all believers are God’s people.  Both words referred to all believers.  From there, the first sixty pages breaks down in simple English what the church that was trained by the apostles were taught about their common life of living for Jesus, and how the Roman Empire and later social and political moves distorted the church in later times, with the result of the church largely losing much of its unique flavor in contrast to the world, going from believers “edifying each other” as in 1 Thessalonians 5:ll changed to one person in charge of a formal organization, being somehow divinely called to this work (although no one ever explains how that works), teaching others forever, and being in charge of everything.  This is explained in a manner that is readable for the average person.

            In pages 61 to 70, which is an introduction to the balance of the book, he examines some of the ideas Eugene Peterson, the lead translator to “The Message” Bible, seminary professor, and pastor, has in his recent memoir of his days as a pastor, and his mother’s experience of preaching in the towns of Montana.  Jon uses this reference in that, in the memoir, Eugene points out certain difficulties with being a pastor, which correspond to the basic problems all pastors have today, and shows how the main problems tie to traditions that are not based on anything scriptural.

            The rest of the book builds a theological argument.  If one isn’t into reading theology, and Zens’ writing is not nearly as complicated to read as much of the writing today in the field, these first 70 pages are worth getting the whole book. For persons in a pastoral position, I wish I could buy a copy of this for each believer occupying such a position (and I say believer in that, for persons holding church office who are not believers in Jesus, this whole argument is irrelevant to them).  If one has the mental wherewithal to read theology, the conclusion Jon draws at the end I will say is surprising enough to keep everyone who cares about living to glorify Jesus .reading to the end. 

            Other writers have pointed out that the word “pastor” comes from a Greek word meaning “shepherd” and of which is translated “shepherd” the other 17 times it appears in the New Testament, which questions whether its appearance in an English Bible is even appropriate. Surprisingly, to me, Jon never brings up this point either in the general reading or the theological argument part of the book.  He does discuss what the Greek word ekklesia, commonly translated “church”, meant to the early church, and what its clearest, not tradition-distorted, equivalent would be today.  To me, that fact was worth the price and time of buying and reading this.

            In buying my copy, I am aware than many Christian bookstores will not carry this title due to Zens’ reputation for challenging the status quo (www.cbd.com included, as of last week), but www.amazon.com has it, and, given that Jon runs a bookstore in Wisconsin, I’m sure his website, www.jonzens.com has it.

Was I a revolutionary?

 

            I was talking with a person where I work today, and I drifted on the subject of being a college student during the 1970’s.  Just before a break ended, this person asked about my attitude at the time, “Did you consider yourself a revolutionary?”  I can remember thinking through this exact question when I was in college, and I can say that, in opposition to what many of my fellow students have gone through, my point of view on this question hasn’t changed, in large part due to my having already been a believer in Jesus for a few years at that point.

            I would say that, both then and now, counterrevolutionary would be a better description, on (at least) two different levels.

            First, since, during that time, the Cold War was still going on, let me consider the attitude of persons in the governments, Communist Parties, and police/secret police forces of such countries.  Without regard to how long or short the Party had been in power, they overtly described their cause as a revolution, because they saw their point of view as being something for not just their country, but eventually for the world.  As a believer in Jesus, I would have been considered someone connected with the point of view that they had overthrown. They, in turn, either did not understand or did not want to understand the difference between true followers of Jesus, and a political status quo that gave lip service to Christianity as being the status quo belief (this clearly fits European, Central American, and South American countries, and not Asian ones).

            Here in the U. S., as in much of the western world, the revolution was with regard to the social status quo.  Most western countries have heritages, legal and voluntary ethical systems which were, to varying degrees, connected to Judeo-Christian ethics (with the Christian part having greater practical influence), the Magna Carta, English Common Law, and in the U.S., the influence of the east coast being originally settled by persons looking for freedom to worship the Christian faith according to their conscience, be it Puritan, Anglican, Catholic, or whatever (with extremely little emphasis on whatever).  Over the centuries, this tradition has eroded within popular culture due to individual’s personal choices over generations, with particular effect from our soldiers’ contact with European secularism during World Wars I and II, the choice of public universities to overtly avoid recommending and enforcing any kind or moral values beginning in (approximately) the 1950’s, in part due to an affiliation with something called Darwinianism (that was beginning to be distorted in ways Darwin, I believe, would have disagreed with) and then the rise of a non-system of moral values that had some public face with the beatnik movement and its sloppy form of eastern philosophy infecting pop culture, and carried to the masses of youth more effectively with the swing to rock music being the dominant form in approximately 1962 (not that it was the style of music, but the ideas of persons most influential in that business, whether for reasons of actual personal belief, or merely marketing). Therefore, the revolution, when I was in college, was built around rejecting the values of the previous generation, which was connected to a different style of music, sexual morality, and acceptance of whatever the government and big business told us as being true, and, lastly, truth itself.  As a follower of Jesus, believing, not by blind faith (which ties to eastern beliefs’ not making any claim to being ultimately true), but by believing that there is one God which communicated his ways via the Bible, and that this way of living is consistently defensible historically and scientifically, and that sexual morality, how I treat my body, i.e., recreational drug use,  and the existence of truth and Truth, I stood in a position of being contrary to both this social revolution and the status quo.  Therefore, I was and am a counterrevolutionary.  The original status quo was God before the introduction to the world, and the revolution is against God and toward any of a smorgasboard of sins.

            Today, the world has continued.  People have joked that Marxism has lost respect except in Berkeley, CA.  Certainly, Jihadism, a small but highly influential branch within Islam (that, admitted, many of its adherents disavow) has replaces the Communist countries as the #1 enemy of the U.S.  The Koran is 1/6 the size of the Bible, whereas the complete writings of Marx must be 30 times larger (I am guessing; I saw the set once, but size is also a matter of type style).  Western society has moved on from the counterculture to postmodernism.  I maintain that God, truth, and each man’s desire to do things his own way hasn’t changed.  I am still a counterrevolutionary.