We are in a moment of transition. Looking backward, we feel loss. Douglas has preached his last sermon while pastor here. His name is no longer at the top of the bulletin. There is grieving to do and healing to take place. In time, it will happen.

Looking forward we feel uncertainty. Most of us have not met our new pastor. What will she be like? How will things change? We are starting off on a new trip, and it could be helpful to have some tools on board to help us deal with things we encounter on the way.

Several months ago I was thinking about what gave different pastors different styles of ministry, and it occurred to me that there was a personality model which might have some important clues.

Thirty years ago a psychiatrist named Eric Berne proposed a personality theory called Transactional Analysis. It says each of us carries within us a Parent ego state, an Adult ego state, and a Child ego state. "Each one of the ego states [has] ...its own language and function; the Parent's is a language of values, the Adult's is a language of logic and rationality and the Child's is a language of emotions."⁽¹⁾ "All three aspects of the personality have a high survival and living value...each of them...has its legitimate place in a full and productive life."⁽²⁾

These ego states are expressed in our interaction with others. As the Adult, we are focused on facts and figures. As the Parent, we are acting like we once experienced our own parents acting. As the Child, we have the emotional directness, the spontaneity of children.

Each of us has all three ego states, but like personality types, it occurred to me that we tend to prefer one or another, and that this would affect pastoral style. Let's take a look at the pastor as Parent, the pastor as Adult, and the pastor as Child.

Claude Steiner writes, "when a person is in the Parent ego state she thinks, feels and behaves like one of her parents or someone who took their place." ⁽³⁾ Parent responses serve two useful functions, nurturing and efficiency.

As nurturers of children, when we switch into the Parent ego state, we have a whole toolkit of automatic responses. We don't have to think through each thing we do-we just do what we remember our parents doing. The basic messages of the pastor as a Nurturing Parent are, "Let me help you make this better...Let me nurture this project....Let me protect you in my office while you tell the story of what happened in your life."

The other useful function of the Parent ego state is efficiency. It's more efficient not to have to think everything through. The pastor has learned a number of things which he no longer needs to think about. What to say before a unison prayer, how to organize an altar for a church service - never to divulge things shared in confidence except in cases of physical endangerment -- all these things are often done without thinking, and doing things the way we've always done them can be very efficient.

The pastor may also act as a critical parent-telling the congregation that they are going the wrong direction in life and a change in direction is called for. I think that the preferred ego state of a pastor like Jerry Falwell is the critical parent, where the basic message is "Here is what you ought to do."

From a parent ego state, a pastor might plan activities such as classes on how to behave in certain situations, or classes on the Ten Commandments. Operating from a Parent ego-state, a pastor might teach classes on how to make things better morally, economically or socially, whether across town or across the world.

When we are in the Adult ego state we are like a computer, gathering and processing data and making predictions."⁽⁴⁾ We use logical thinking to solve problems.

As Adult, the pastor's basic message is "let's think about this." This is my own preferred style.

From an adult ego state, a pastor might plan activities like lectures on topics where information and analysis are important, or a needs analysis of community social problems, or congregational strategic planning.

C. Pastor as Child

Eric Berne called the child ego state in many ways the most valuable part of the personality".⁽⁵⁾ Like an actual child, the child ego state contributes "charm, pleasure and creativity."⁽⁶⁾ For Steiner, "It is the source of spontaneity, sexuality, creative change, and is the mainspring of joy."⁽⁷⁾ It's the only part of a person that "can really enjoy itself."⁽⁸⁾ "The Child has all the feelings: fear, love, anger, joy, sadness, shame... The Child is often blamed for being the source of people's troubles because it is self-centered, emotional, powerful and resists the suppression that comes with growing up."⁽⁹⁾

As Child, the pastor's basic message is, "Come, play with me." One of the reasons I believe Douglas was especially loved is that while I can certainly think of times Douglas operated out of his Nurturing Parent or Adult quite well, the ego state I think he really enjoyed was his Child. "What Fun!" We will miss that. The Child likes to interrupt Adult activities and pops out in a sermon when something engages my sense of humor. "Let's laugh together" is something my Child says.

If there is a pastoral style, there is also a congregational style. When we hear a statement from the pastor's ego-state, we respond from ours. "Makes sense to me" is a response from our Adult ego state. "Great, let me help too," is a response from our Nurturing Parent. And when our congregation's response is "What Fun," we are responding from our Child. Of course a lot of the time the congregation initiates and the pastor responds.

Just as I have a preferred ego state and Douglas has a preferred ego state, we will discover our new pastor has a preferred ego state. It will be a different experience, and it will be OK. To maintain a congregational life that is nurturing, stimulating and fun, it will be important to find new ways our ego state preferences can complement our pastor's, to make up a balanced whole.

We can respond from any of our ego states and things will be OK as long as we are responding to where the pastor is coming from. So the pastor's Adult can say, "let's reason together," and our Child can respond, "what fun." Or the pastor's Child can say, "come, play with me," and our Adult can respond, "makes sense to me," or our Parent can respond, "be careful."

What doesn't work is a crossed transaction. The pastor's Adult says to us, "Let's reason together," and our Rebellious Child talks back, addressing not the pastor's Adult but his Parent: "I don't wanna, and you can't make me." A crossed transaction is painful because the response comes back to a part of us that didn't speak, while the part of us that did speak feels unheard.

When Douglas first arrived, I found myself in a crossed transaction. With previous pastors, one thing I liked to do occasionally was to write liturgies or prayers for them to use in the worship service. When Douglas arrived I discovered that didn't work, and I had some hurt feelings. Looking back, I figured out what was going on was my Child saying, "Come, play with my toys," and Douglas's Child talking back to my Parent, saying, "You can't make me." But poke around a little farther and maybe my message to Douglas was really, "Come, play with my toys, but you have to play by my rules." When we have a crossed transaction it's important to step back and figure out what the real messages were.

Transactional Analysis theory says that behind a crossed transaction is often someone who is feeling not OK, or thinks the other person is not OK.

A lot of religion promotes people being not OK. In colonial times, Jonathan Edwards preached a sermon called "Sinners in the hands of an angry God." That's not the message I get from this morning's Gospel. What I hear in John 3:16 is a God who said, "It's so totally important to me that our relationship be "I'm OK - you're OK" that I will put myself on the cross if that's what it takes to make that happen."

Jesus told us, "where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them."⁽¹⁰⁾ For Christians, then, God plays a major role in our transactions. When you pray, do you have a picture of God in mind? Is it always the same picture? Trinity Sunday says we should have different pictures like Father, Son and Holy Spirit or Creator, Sustainer and Redeemer. The P-A-C model says those pictures could be Parent, Adult, Child, and the P-A-C imagery can put our prayer life into technicolor.

When I think of God as Parent, I think of God, Moses and the Ten Commandments -- rules that a parent knows are for the children's welfare. Like when a parent says, "Thou shalt not put thy little hands on the hot burner," the command is about love, not control. I think of the Holy Spirit challenging us to grow up and fulfil our God-given potential. I think of Jesus' maternal lament, "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!"⁽¹¹⁾ And I think of that picture Jesus gives us of the Father of the two sons, one of whom took his inheritance and squandered it in a far country, loving us, waiting for us, running out to greet us, and barbecuing the fatted calf for us to celebrate our return home. There is a God as Parent we can pray to.

When I think of God as Adult, the image that comes to mind is Jesus' parables, sermons, teachings -- challenging us, stretching our minds, giving us information. A prayer that says, "God, help me think this through," is a prayer to God the Adult.

And I discover I can think of God as Child, too. We get a glimpse through Jesus creating wine at a wedding feast. Jesus used the imagery of children when he asked, "to what shall I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to one another, 'We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn."⁽¹²⁾

But if the Child is the source of creativity, think of the Creation itself. Was the creation of the universe truly just hard work by an aged figure with a beard? Or is a better image of the Creator a Cosmic Child delightedly flinging the stars and planets across the heavens and playing with the mud to make the animals and saying, "What fun, what fun?" And can't you picture behind every conception that has helped fill our church with children, God playing, throwing thousands of genes and chromosomes into the air to see where they will land and watching with delight as there, and there, and there new human children are formed. And from the perspective of God as Child, isn't one of the messages the Holy Spirit constantly whispers in our ears, "Come, play with me....come, play with me?" Would your prayers be different if you had THAT picture of God when you pray?

As we set out to greet our new pastor, we are enriched to face our uncertainties with these tools on board. In the sight of God, we are OK and she is OK. We will each bring the riches of the Parents, Adults, and Children of our identities. Where one of us has less of something, others will have more, and the whole will work.

Our United Methodist pastoral appointment system is like a dance--one of those square dances where you dance several steps and then it's time for an alleman left, you whirl around, and there you are with a new partner. And maybe the new partner looks a little different and feels a bit different on your arm--but the dance is going on. What fun!

ENDNOTES

1. "A Compilation of Core Concepts," compiled by the ITAA Development Committee Task Force on Transactional Analysis Core Concepts Claude Steiner, Chair; August 1999 http://www.igc.org/emlit/core.htm

2. Eric Berne, M. D., Games People Play, New York: Grove Press, 1964, p 28.

3. "A Compilation of Core Concepts," compiled by the ITAA Development Committee Task Force on Transactional Analysis Core Concepts Claude Steiner, Chair; August 1999 http://www.igc.org/emlit/core.htm

4. Claude M. Steiner, Scripts People Live, New York: Grove Press, 1974, p. 35-6

5. Eric Berne, M. D., Games People Play, New York: Grove Press, 1964, p 25.

6. Eric Berne, M. D., Games People Play, New York: Grove Press, 1964, p 26.

7. Claude M. Steiner, Scripts People Live, New York: Grove Press, 1974, p. 35

8. Claude M. Steiner, Scripts People Live, New York: Grove Press, 1974, p. 35

9. "A Compilation of Core Concepts," compiled by the ITAA Development Committee Task Force on Transactional Analysis Core Concepts Claude Steiner, Chair; August 1999 http://www.igc.org/emlit/core.htm

10. Matthew 18:20 NRSV

11. Matthew 23:37 NRSV

12. Matthew 11:16-17 NRSV