Let me begin with a disclaimer that for the purpose of this post, I use the words “Christian,” “pre-Christian world,” “pastor” and “post-Christian world” in the traditional evangelical sense.
Coming back from my month of travels meant it was time to tackle my application for permanent residency in New Zealand. All the paperwork I had been waiting for had arrived, and I didn’t need to use my passport again till August at the earliest. All that was left was a letter from my higher-ups saying that my continued presence at the job is necessary for the religious work in New Zealand to move forward, and a job description.
Ahh… That job description.
As mentioned in previous posts, I created my own job and the higher-ups signed off on it. All that we knew at the very beginning was that there was a need for a Christ community to be present in the city; the rest was up to me to figure out.
Well, great. That’s a great job description to send in to the immigration office, aye?
In the last few weeks I’ve had a bit of anxiety over how to describe my job in a way that, as my friend Baruk says, “checks all the boxes in any application form”. Part of the problem came about when I decided to take Ingress more seriously.
What is Ingress? The simplest way to describe it is that it’s an alternate reality game owned by Google. It’s a little bit like geocaching, a little bit like Risk. As explained by my brother, the story goes that there are a bunch of aliens (the Enlightened) that want to dominate the world through portals around the world. The humans (the Resistance) are trying to stop them by taking over these portals.
The reality is that the way this game plays out, neither of those teams stand a chance at real world domination. It’s kind of like playing Age of Empires with friends who are equal-leveled players on each side. I know, the struggle is real.
Until recently, I mostly played the game by myself even though I knew there was a strong Resistance (Go Smurfs!) community in Auckland. But last Thursday, I took a chance and went to one of their events. I’ll spare you the nerdy game details, but it included dinner at the night market, going to the park to work out our next game play.
Needless to say, I was scared out of my mind because my introvert was screaming, HELP HELP HELP, I don’t know how to deal with new social situations. But my curious anthropologist always wins out in these situations.
How does community play out in this gaming world?
Are they friendly?
Will they judge me if I don’t take their gaming seriously enough?
How will I introduce myself?
By my real name, or by my gamer profile?
And what if they ask me what I did for a living?
Crap. That dastardly job description thing again.
Well, thankfully with gamers (this group anyway), as long as you speak enough gaming, they’ll be friendly to you. We finished what we set out to do, nobody asked too many questions, and thankfully it was a weeknight so I had the excuse that I needed to head home so I didn’t have to engage in too much post-game pleasantries.
The next night, they had another social event in a bar. It made me even more nervous because the introvert doesn’t enjoy the bar scene, and (gasp!) what if the Church people knew I was hanging out at the bar?? But I decided to make an appearance and not stay long.
That was when I learnt about the spirit of the game. Yes, it is competitive. But there are a few things I learnt that make it more fun, and also things that can be quite handy to keep in mind as I continue creating “my job”:
1) Community means team
Friday night’s event began with someone asking if anyone was free to help level up a lower level player. One of the things I love about this game is the ethics of it. If you are level 8 or higher, you are expected to set things up to help those at a lower level to level up faster. Yes, I’m still a social justice nerd even in the gaming world. What? It probably is against the ethics of this game to do an anthropological study of it, but I can’t help myself.
As the new kid on the team strategy block, a few of them sat down with me to share tips and offered a few spots where I can capture the portals and they would keep watch on them for me. Let’s just say, it’s also more fun to do things that way.
2) Community means acceptance
Well, the event ended up evolving into a celebration for an Enlightened player who had just hit level 16 (the highest level in the game). There were a lot more Resistance players there for the celebration than there were from her own team.
The first person I spotted was a guy that I had ran into while gaming in the CBD about a week ago. I was greeted with a big hug like an old friend, and introduced to the rest of the team. There were no questions asked about life stories or religious or political views, which was a very refreshing change. They had recruited the bar manager to the Resistance side, so our team got tap beers for $5 and the guy who had developed the relationship with the bar manager over time shouted drinks for anyone who wanted one. People simply belonged because they shared that common identity: being a part of the Resistance. And as evidenced by that night, you don’t even have to be a part of the same team for us to be friendly with each other. What a novel concept!
Well, back to what I was saying about my job description…
After the night at the night market, I began to realize I needed to figure out a new way to talk about what I do. In prior experiences, whenever I say I’m a pastor, I get one of four responses:
1) They suddenly treat me with a great deal of respect like I’m some kind of saint. Ask any of the crazy kids who hang out with us at The Bridge. I’m not THAT kind of pastor.
2) They try to engage in some deep theological debate that I feel completely inadequate and uncomfortable doing in a big (more than 2-3 people) social setting because I don’t know the crowd well enough to really speak my mind theologically yet.
3) They ask, “What’s that?” and I don’t really know how to explain that I am affiliated with the Church, but I don’t preach and teach in that traditional sense, and no, I’m not the Sunday morning type of pastor.
4) They awkwardly change the subject or walk away.
That’s when I realized: I’ve known for a long time how to be a Christian in a pre-Christian world, but I don’t know how to be a pastor in a post-Christian world.
Most of my best friends growing up didn’t share my religion or faith and we’ve always gotten along. They celebrated my ordination like they would have for any graduations, job promotions or weddings, and my becoming an ordained pastor doesn’t change anything about our friendship; it’s just something I do as a job (or vocation).
The problem is I live in Auckland. Now that I’ve lived here nearly four years, I’m getting a better understanding of what post-Christianity means in Auckland. It’s weird enough to say I’m a Christian; it gets even weirder when I say I work with a church because there's either no understanding, or a negative experience of church.
But I didn’t want to be that Christian kid in high school who hides that I’m a Christian because I’m afraid I would be teased. Besides, my very clever church health consultant friend, Brett had been encouraging me to find a way to describe what I do that would make sense to both the Christian and post-Christian worlds and not threatening either. I decided that I would start saying I’m a community developer by day (and church planter by night, if they ask).
I tested the waters with that on Friday night. As with most social settings where I’m uncomfortable, “watch and learn” has become a lifelong mantra. The first time the “what do you do?” question came up, I took a deep breath to remind myself I’m learning to speak a different language. It went something like that:
Me: I’m a community developer.
Her: Oh, cool! With what organization?
Me: Umm… (Well, clearly I hadn’t thought this through very well) A church?
Her: Oh. (Turns away long enough for me to start getting super anxious). Well, that guy over there? He’s done some church work too.
Me: Oh, cool.
Her: (Slowly walks away)
Me: (Well, that went REALLY well. Next time this comes up, you better have a better game plan.)
So later that night, the guy who’s done some church work comes over to discuss game strategy. It comes up again…
Me: I’m a community developer.
Him: (I catch a glimpse of a knowing look on his face) Oh, nice. With what organization?
Me: (Trying to be brave) It’s a new organization called The Bridge.
Him: Hmm… That must be a new one. I have a bit of a background in community development, and my last supervisor at uni is like the head of several community development organizations around Auckland.
Me: (Oh crap. Oh crap. He’s going to call me out that The Bridge isn’t a real organization because I have no idea what’s on my job description.) Oh, nice. (Tries to change the subject) So what do you do now?
Him: Well, I used to do community development with a church as well, and somehow I keep finding myself coming back to that. I still do community development, just not with a church anymore. So is The Bridge supported by a church as well?
Me: Well, we get our funding from a few churches, but there is not ONE church that we are attached to.
Him: Oh, so who started The Bridge?
Me: (Oh crap. Oh crap. He’s going to find out this is all kind of a fraud. Well, fake it till you make it then, I guess. At least try to sound confident.) Me.
Him: Oh, nice! So is there expectation that you have to bring people to a church from what you’re doing? Because when I was working with the church, there was always that expectation.
Me: Well, I try not to make that the top of my agenda. To me, the community development part is more important, and if a church is formed out of that, then great. (What I didn’t say was, community development done well WILL eventually lead to a church coming together. What form that church takes on remains to be seen.)
Him: Oh, very nice! That actually sounds brilliant.
Me: Yeah, it is. And it’s actually a lot of fun.
And with that, we very easily transitioned the conversation back to game strategy. No need for awkwardness.
As much as I would like to believe that what I’m doing is cutting-edge ministry and relevant for the context of downtown Auckland that I live in, being raised in traditional evangelical church leaves a deep imprint on the way I still process stuff. And I find myself questioning the orthodoxy of what I’m doing on a regular basis. But I also have to remember I live in a different context from the ones that I grew up in physically, spiritually and theologically.
It is a different day in a different world. It may be a while before I really get comfortable with what this job description looks like. And realistically, what I’m going to turn in with my residency application will not be an accurate of what “work” looks like on a daily basis because that will keep evolving. But for now, this community development/church planter “checks all the boxes in any application form”. More importantly, it sits well with the call God has placed on my life. And that’s good enough for me.
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