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Just saw some subtweets about the "pastors shouldn't be friends with their parishioners" take and while I don't feel like arguing with randoms, here's my take anyway as an extremely mainline protestant.
Look. Lura wasn't saying that pastors can't have meaningful relationships with parishioners. Idk how many times they need to explain that. This wasn't a hypothetical situation they were talking about. This kind of stuff causes serious spiritual harm.
I understand that people are angry about power structures in the church. I agree with you there. But that's another conversation. At the end of the day, being a pastor is a job. And you need professional boundaries.
Church leaders are not islands. Nobody is saying we are. We need support from parishioners! But like it or not, we have power over them. Being blasé about boundaries will NOT make that go away.
Again, I really only have experience in the ELCA. So let's say an ELCA pastor did decide to hang out with parishioners on the weekend to try and equalize the community. They still have to answer to the synod.
I don't feel like I'm explaining this very well because I'm really frustrated. Maybe I'll finish this thread later. But part of the reason I lost my last job was because my pastor didn't have healthy boundaries with the congregation.
All I'm saying is, not being "friends" with parishioners doesn't mean you don't care about them or they're not allowed to support you. I wish some of you would understand this.
You know what? Since subtweeting is for nerds and I don't want to be a nerd, I'll just add the main tweet that sparked my train of thought for the sake of clarity. Fuck it: https://twitter.com/_ryancagle/status/1287057592968069121?s=19
I don't know this person and honestly I agree with them! I don't want to fight a stranger! But it upsets me that I'm seeing a lot of people discount what Lura was trying to say this morning.
Now I'm regretting not sorting out my thoughts before tweeting out a long ass stream of consciousness. I honestly think everyone in this whole discourse is just trying to figure out how we can stop clergy abuse. And I wish there was an easy solution.
If the person I quote tweeted is reading this, sorry for the random notification.
