Your Pastor Is a Nerd

By Rev. Hans W. Fiene

Now, I’m not 100 percent entirely certain about this.

I wouldn’t swear to it in a court of law. But, based on many years of observing myself and other pastors, as certain as I am that your pastor went to a Lutheran seminary in St. Louis or Fort Wayne and as certain as I am that your pastor wears black socks on Sunday morning, I’m just about as certain that your pastor is a nerd.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

In all reality, it’s most often a good thing for your pastor to be a nerd. Nerds are often avid readers who excel in their specific area of training. And this is good. You want a pastor who knows who’s who and what’s what on every page of the Bible and who can spend all day quoting the Word of God from memory with the same skill that enables nerds of other varieties to rattle off endless, memorized quotes from Napoleon Dynamite or Star Wars.

But while there are many great things about having your pastor be a nerd, there is also a dark side to pastor nerdery—that dark side being an overwhelming desire to be seen as quite the opposite of a nerd. And, unfortunately, when pastors give into the dark side of their nerdery, they do it in the worst way possible: by trying to show the youth of the congregation how awesome they are.

Whether it was your pastor or someone else’s, you’ve probably witnessed this before. You’ve probably shuffled nervously in your seat as a called and ordained servant of the Word unleashed supposedly hip words and phrases that you vaguely recall using yourself about five years ago. You’ve probably cringed in embarrassment as he made reference to some pop culture thing of your generation that you’re pretty sure he just learned about through the power of Wikipedia four days before. In all of this, you’ve probably thought to yourself, “Uh, if this is what it means to be a Christian, I think I want out.” And whenever such a thought is thunk, you’ve just witnessed the great tragedy of a pastor making the Gospel seem quite lame in his attempts to be cool.

So, what’s a teenager to do when he witnesses his pastor giving into the dark side of nerdery? What’s a youth to do when she worries that her shepherd might be scandalizing the faith of his younger sheep? Well, as it turns out, there is much we can learn by looking to Scripture’s chief of sinners and chief of nerds: the apostle Paul.

There is no doubt that Paul was a giant nerd. Based upon his own words, it’s very easy to picture him back in his days as Saul the Student, perhaps having skipped several grades of Pharisee school, never failing to raise his hand to answer every question, and always making certain he got the best grade on every exam. “And I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people,” he says in Galatians 1:13, “so extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers.”

And yet, when Paul reveals this about himself, he doesn’t do what you might expect a nerd pastor to do. Prefacing the above Scripture verse, Paul states, “For you have heard of my former life in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it” (Galatians 1:13). And through these words, Paul reveals that he isn’t listing his accomplishments of intelligence and zeal because he wants to wow people with his awesomeness. Instead, he’s listing those same accomplishments to reveal the great mercy of God in Christ Jesus, to reveal the great love of a Savior who could forgive a sinner as great as Paul, even using him to serve and build Christ’s Church. Here in these words, Paul shows us that, if a nerd pastor wants to avoid scandalizing the Gospel by giving into the dark side of his nerdery, the greatest way he can do this is simply by preaching the Gospel, by forgetting himself and focusing on Jesus Christ and His mercy.

And so, if ever you see your pastor making the faith look stupid while giving in to the dark side of nerdery, don’t just roll your eyes and leave it at that. Remind him of what he should be doing. Remind him of what that nerd apostle did. Remind him that he never needs to impress you with anything other than how greatly God loved you through the pierced hands and feet of His Son. Tell him that, even if he doesn’t know what music you listen to or what you think is funny, he’ll still be the awesomest, coolest, best pastor you could have whenever he tells you that your sins are forgiven in the blood of Christ.

And, if ever you tell that to your pastor, you can say it in good conscience because it’s true. The pastor who preaches Christ is always the awesomest, coolest, best pastor there is. Even if he’s a big nerd. Which your pastor is. Probably.

Rev. Hans Fiene is pastor of Mount Calvary Lutheran Church in Denver, Colorado. Contact him at pastorfiene@gmail.com.