Many years ago I was a student in a summer school course at Regent College. The Professor was Philip Yancey, a popular writer in church circles. Yancey had written a book called “The Jesus I Never Knew” and the summer course was an in-depth look at the material from that book. At the time Yancey was writing a new book “What is So Amazing About Grace?”. This became a best seller, I think the top-selling of Yancey’s many books. It was influential in church circles as a corrective to legalistic, judgmental tendencies. For this reason, I remember an encounter during the class.
Yancey had finished up a great part of the lecture. The content was interesting, engaging and left students like myself thinking towards a helpful and hopeful view of who Jesus was for the outcast and weary. As Yancey’s comments drew to a kind of philosophical, spiritual crescendo, he posed a hypothetical question. It was a meaning of life question, a presence of God in the world question, an unanswerable question intended to provoke considerate silence.
We all moved into the silence that Yancey had set out. Except for one man. Almost no one had laptops at that time, they were a luxury item. This man had a laptop and he was the sit-right-near-the-front kind of guy. It might not be fair or true in remembering, but I have in my memory that he was wearing khakis and a golf shirt, the era-appropriate (for some to this day) attire for a pastor not at church. When Yancey put before us the deeply meaningful question, most people in the class responded with a thoughtful eye close and head bow, a demonstration that we were getting what he was asking with the question. This one man, though, this right-near-the-front” guy, shot up his hand. Yancey could not pretend to not see it. “Yes”, he said pointing to the man’s arm while including a question mark and a kind of warning drawl in the inflection of the word “Yes?” The man now stood up, unprompted, scooting his laptop to the side.
”I have been thinking about this question a lot,” he said. He then launched into a relatively lengthy and exceedingly confident three point outline of why there is suffering in the world or something like that. It was clear that this man was a pastor, a preacher, and he had preached on a topic relevant to Yancey’s question recently. I think that most of us in the lecture hall were aware of what was happening. We were all being treated to a summary of the man’s recent sermon. What happened next was astounding. Yancey, the person who was at that very time living in the context of writing a book called “What’s so Amazing about Grace?”, paused for a minute as the man apparently waited for some kind of affirmation or response. Then the response came and it was, at least in my hearing, filled with sarcasm and tinged with frustration,
“Gee (a lilting “gee”), are you a Pastor?”
It was amazing. The man sat back down silently and tried to completely disappear into his laptop. I thought to myself, “I don’t think he’s rushing out to buy the next Yancey book”.
Inspired by this encounter I named a Prayer Meeting Character that is present in many prayer meetings and often at the end of a church service. This is the “Gee, Are You a Pastor?” character.
The prayers of this character are often a restatement of something that the person has said previously. When I was a teenager, a pastor that I heard preach regularly restated all of the points of his sermon in the post-sermon prayer, “Dear God, we know that we should (point one), prepare our hearts, that we should, (point two), practice prayerfulness, and that we should (point three), position ourselves for witness”. It would be something like that, often points were punctuated with the same first letter (usually the letter “p”). I would think, “Why are you telling God what you just preached?” It sounds like you are preaching a sermon to God. Either that or this prayer is directed not at God, but at the congregation.”
Thanks to Philip Yancey I would (with a smile and with regard for the pastor, not disdain) say in my mind, “Gee. Are you a Pastor?”.
A few weeks ago I wrote about another Prayer Meeting Character, the “Justander”. You can read about it here.
I would love to hear more about your Prayer Meeting Characters.
The “character” with the laptop came to preach. Perhaps this is reminder for us all.
Why do we come to “prayer”...or even a college class?
I did not grow up with public prayer or public prayer meetings.
Though I still might attend them I find them uncomfortable and often offensive which Is why
I would not ask for prayer for myself during these times. On occasion I have heard another’s private life shared in the name of “prayer”.
When we meet for Studies, I hope you won’t have to ask us “Gee, Are you a Pastor?”