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Wayne Walder (WW):

We often try to fix things as Ministers. We might see, a broken world, broken people, or difficult circumstances and we try to facilitate, support, create, and improve the situation. Yet the world always requires fixing. So many of us try harder, we might even work longer hours. We get sick or burnt-out as we continue to help. We don’t take time for real self care. Our families suffer.

               

 

(WW):

Many of us see a broken world needing attention. We also recognize we need to model a different way to work in the world. But we are not always clear about how to do both.

               

(WW):

Thank you. People in the West seek entertainment when they first come to religious community because they experience it everywhere. I call it spiritual entertainment. And many of us know that to become a deeper community we have to work with sexuality, anger, race, love, insight, greed, conflict and other dark knights of the soul. How do we make the switch between people’s expectations of religious community and the real thing, without scaring them away?

               

 

(WW):

There is a lot of talk in our movement about “Minister Excellence” and “Minister maturation”. All of us want to grow up, and most of us want to be better Ministers. The tension is, we often don’t know how to do it. There are not many people who can do graduate level teaching in “Ministerial maturation”. The result is, we are often seduced by the next new thing, the pop ideas or the new sexy technique.

               

 

(WW):

Are you talking about building a deep foundation of spirituality?

               

(WW):

Thank you. There’s one last question I have. I wonder about your thoughts on competition, jealousy and fear among Ministers?

 

(WW):

Yes. We are not always good at celebrating each other. We have a shyness or a fear of being criticized by our colleagues. There is of course, a wonderful support system among our colleagues, AND a significant amount of jealousy, competition, and mistrust. People are shy about bringing their insights into the light.

 

(WW):

Jealousy, Competition, and fear there’s going to be a class of Ministers that are considered ‘good’ and a class of Ministers that are going to be considered ‘not so good’.

               

 

(WW):

Well, several parts of our history come from the University tradition.

               

 

(WW):

Thank you. I could have a much longer conversation, but our time is up.

               

(TM):

(WW):

Are you asking if we are dilettantes, a little bit of this and a little bit of that and a lot of nothing? Is this the criticism you started the question with?

 

(WW):

We have a wide breath of information and resources within our tradition. I believe it is a wonderful part of our heritage. Sometimes we forget, we are afraid, or we feel we do not have time to go deeply into this heritage. Maybe our challenge is now to focus and embody that information. Then we can really speak about it, not from the point of view of the academic or the entertaining, but rather how it fits into and changes our lives.

               

 

(WW):

Thomas, thank you very much.