On Pastor Selection

One of the things a Church must do as they select a new pastor in the ELCA (Evangelical Church of America) is fill out a form, or write a paper, or something like that, that basically describes what kind of Church you are.  This is important.  After all, you wouldn't want a pastor looking for a gritty inner-city ministry experience to wind up in a suburban church where a squeeky PA system counts for strife, right?  But a bad PA system does so grate on one's ears...

My Church actually sent out surveys with the intention of conglomerating our responses into the statement, which I was grateful for.  It gave us all a chance to have a voice in the selection process, let the council take the Church's ideological temperature, so on and so forth.  

Well, at the end was this open comment block where one could write anything that one wanted to about the selection process or anything else.  I don't know if I had a bit too much beer with my buffalo wings that night or if  I just found the idea of playing the buffoon too irresistible,  but in a fit of pique I wrote "I think we should extend a call to a lesbian pastor with purple hair", and I clicked the "Submit" button.

I didn't think too much of it, honestly,  but you know how things go.  Some council member talks to his wife one night during a commercial break for Mad Men, breaking the council code of secrecy just to fill the heavy, silent air with some kind of meaningful conversation, anything.  A couple days later she tells a friend over coffee who then mentions it to someone else when the subject comes up during bible study and pretty soon you overhear a conversation about how someone in the congregation actually wants to hire a lesbian with purple hair, though no one knows who, and isn't that just...

So I am now apparently famous -- or infamous -- for really just having a laugh, though until now no one knows that it was me.  

But as I go to Church with many friends and colleagues  and as I feel it is necessary to maintain a high moral standing amongst those most imminent of persons, I find I have this incredible need begin to backpeddle, slip-slide, flip flop, and other wise dodge, duck, dip, dive, and dodge away from my previous comments.

So here it goes:  I don't think we should call a purple haired lesbian to be our next pastor.  Call me old fashioned, but I just believe in my heart of hearts that such people simply are not fit to lead a church.  I mean...purple hair, it's just simply unprofessional.  How am I supposed to take you seriously if you have purple hair?

Sorry, but you can't be my pastor. 

Purple hair may be fine if you are a punk rocker or a pole dancer or over the age of 70.  But being a pastor is a noble profession, and I expect a pastor to be have a professional bearing.  Shoes should be shined, clothes should be neat, ill-advised tattoos should be hidden, abnormally placed piercings momentarily removed.  And someone with purple hair...well, like I said, I just can't take them seriously.  They'd be giving a sermon, laying down a little Truth, and I'd just be thinking about how damn purple their hair is rather than letting the Holy Spirit guide me to a better understanding of God and Grace.

I hope I am not sounding like a bigot here.  I'm all for all the colors of the rainbow and inclusion and all that happy-happy-joy-joy bullshit.  But purple?  Purple???  I'm sorry, but that is one color of the rainbow I simply cannot abide in when it comes to being a Pastor.

So there.  Chalk up another point for Truth, Justice, and the American Way.

Photo Credit:  I think that is Katy Perry, or someone in her entourage, very seductively eating a piece of pizza while Katy was on tour in NYC.  Taken from Katy Perry's official website, where we have been informed that she is finally getting "Back to Werk".