It just occurred to me today that if your church building is new and gorgeous and contemporary and you look in any way frumpy, the contrast will be especially striking. As in, “Wow. This building is stunning! So clean, so open, so bright, so majestic! The parements! The stained glass! The…. totally frumpy minister with the nerdy glasses and the dandruff. Ouch.”
Similarly, if you preside at worship with a colleague who is also an age peer, and he looks terrific and vibrant and snappy and you look drab and like you simply rolled out of bed, brushed your flat, badly-cut hair, put on the ugliest shoes you could find and came to church, you’re going to invite inevitably unfavorable comparisons. As in, “Yowks. He obviously has a following here and is loving this ministry. The other one, though… clearly second-class citizen on the ministry staff.”
We should never, ever announce by drab appearance that we feel like a second-class citizen in any ministry. Or if you must, why not just wear a sign around your neck? “MY COLLEAGUE IS THE CHARISMATIC, WELL-GROOMED ONE THAT YOU’D PREFER TO LOOK AT AND LISTEN TO. PLEASE PAY NO ATTENTION TO ME. I DON’T REALLY BELONG UP HERE.”
Notice that your big comparison is ‘HE’, and most of your readers are ‘SHE’. I don’t get why women in ministry so often think that it means you have to stop basic self-care, grooming, and self-respect.
So many of my female clergy colleagues look like crap on a cracker. Their signal that they take ministry seriously ends at the collar. They often say things to me like, ‘well, you can dress like a real woman because you’re not ordained.’
I’m not even a (serious) fashionista.
May I add about the building–if your church building is ancient and dignified, well-preserved and loved by the people who worship there, and you look like you’re waiting to be collected off the kerb, what are you saying to your people?
Well, I basically agree with you but…
Two colleagues could get into something of a fashion escalation war if they got too tense about this.
And I wonder what thought you might have about two colleagues who have different understandings of the proper amount of formality required for different kinds of ministerial activities…say one who wants to wear a robe every week in worship and one who doesn’t, or one who dresses to the nines in the office and the other prefers business casual?
Christine, I think the level of formality for worship activities depends on the congregation and its traditions, not the fashion tastes of the ministers. If you aren’t happy meeting the expectations, you ought not to take the job in that place.
Level of formality in the office is another thing. You can be business casual OR dressed to the nines–but both can be neat, clean, well-fitting, flattering. It’s not a matter of formality level, it’s a matter of self-care at any level.
Wendy wrote: I think the level of formality for worship activities depends on the congregation and its traditions, not the fashion tastes of the ministers. If you aren’t happy meeting the expectations, you ought not to take the job in that place.
True, but there is not necessarily a congregational expectation. I wear a robe to lead worship (and gave a sermon years ago explaining why), and my colleague in the same church doesn’t. So when we lead worship together, we look different. This conveys a variety of things to the congregation, but because we are both dressed and groomed to professional standards, I don’t believe that lack of respect from either one of us is one of them.
I suppose it’s different for me, Amy–my tradition is pretty liturgical, and we’d just never have a situation where one minister robed and another didn’t. It would be both or neither.
And in the Anglican churches, which is my tradition, yes, it’s the congregation’s expectation (spoken or unspoken). You get a feel for what is accepted/expected at what kind of service pretty quickly.
About formal paired with less formal vesting – Friends, I can testify. Until 5 years ago, I had been wearing a gorgeous, brilliant blue silk robe with subtle, batik markings, worn open with a straight black dress. I’ve always loved that robe, can you tell? I bought it, in part, because I started my ministry in a small fellowship, who were just getting used to having a minister, period. (I thought a black academic gown would look “threatening”.) We also met in a very informal space. When I joined the ministry team at a much larger, much more formal church, I didn’t bother to assess the robe situation. Then I saw a photo of myself in the pulpit next to an older colleague in her elegant, black academic robe. I felt like a kid. Like she was a real minister, and I was… well, not. I’ve rocked my black robe on Sundays ever since, and save the blue for Friday evening worship.
ok PB, you used to be a teacher…it’s spelled “paraments” with an A in the middle, not an E. 🙂
[BUSTED!! We don’t have them in my tradition so I was guessing. Thanks for busting me. – PB]
This got me thinking another side. What if you’re serving in a congregation or church of more meager means. Not that you should ever look unpolished or unprofessional, but there might be some settings in which wearing designer labels or even a string of pearls might be inappropriate. In the same way we don’t want people thinking, “She’s frumpy and dowdy” we don’t want people thinking, “She’s showing off or thinks she’s above us”. I wonder if there are examples of pastors dressing too far “above” their congregation’s means. Probably doesn’t happen often, but it was a thought…… [And a good one. Thank you. Absolutely important to keep in mind. – PB]
Emily, you’re absolutely right. My parents were missionaries to a country where gold was cheap. Mom had some spectacular jewelry that she purposely did not wear when we visited our supporting churches because she did not want anyone to be suspicious that they were misusing their support funds. She usually wore those cheap, silk thread-covered beads and a simple wedding band. Ditto for my Dad’s Rolex watch he inherited from his father. All of it was honestly come by, but flaunting it would have given the wrong impression.
Peacebang, this is the first post of yours that has ever really resonated with me. Yep, you have to consider total context as you dress. I don’t wear a robe but I’m the second minister on staff; Amy, the senior minister, robes and leads worship more often, so it all makes sense. And I think we both respond to the building, which is well maintained but also has a substantial amount of deferred maintenance — you won’t see us out-dressing the building.
I might add that we were both art students (Amy’s still an artist), and so might be more responsive to our visual surroundings than others.