St. Boniface House

 I have been asked numerous times since I began at Trinity Covenant Church why I wear a clerical collar.  This is a brief attempt to explain why (which is itself a revision of an article I posted on my old Xanga account about a year ago).  For a fuller and better written account, including Biblical arguments, that would largely serve as an explanation for me as well, see Pastor Jeff Meyer’s essay, which can be found here. 

1.      The Propriety of a Uniform 

I have to wear something, so why not wear something that identifies me as a pastor?  Many other professions wear uniforms—policemen, soldiers, and so on.  The fact is that in the history of the church, some sort of distinguishing dress has been the norm for those who hold the pastoral office.  Even many of our Puritan forebears wore some sort of a collar.  I am not a gnostic, so I am not prepared to say that “It doesn’t matter what I wear.”  This being the case, it seems appropriate to wear something that folks will recognize as distinctively pastoral dress.   Besides, what are my other options?  The prescribed alternative in American evangelicalism is to dress in the uniform of the banker or businessman, with some leeway in the range from casual to formal.  That this is the norm is not an accident.  But I am not a business man, and I am not marketing religious goods to consumers.  Why would I dress like one?  There was a billboard advertising a new church in Wichita some time back.  It had a big picture of a denim shirt, and said “This is our pastor’s robe”.  This is exactly the thing I’m trying to avoid.  I’m an ordinary, average guy—which is just what this other church was trying to communicate—but my calling as a shepherd of God’s flock, set apart to proclaim the good news of the Gospel, is decidedly unordinary.  And I am a pastor all the time.  Why not dress like it?  Objections to a uniform for the pastor seem to be more of a reflection of American egalitarianism (which I reject) and an embrace of the Christian church as a voluntary society which must reach out to consumers with a product for them to purchase (which I likewise reject). 

2.      What the collar symbolizes 

Throughout the history of the church, the clerical collar has been a symbolic representation of the collar of the slave.  Paul called himself a doulos Christou (a slave of Christ) and although that applies in a general sense to all Christians, in the New Testament it applies especially to those who have been set apart by the laying on of hands for office.  This is why for a long time pastors were also called “ministers”—servants—because we are much less “equippers” or “facilitators” or “leaders” than we are slaves.  Just ask my wife what our family’s life is like due to this yoke that has been placed upon me (and we are not complaining!).  My calling is to lay my life out for others in a way, perhaps, that not everyone is called to do.  The Lord has commissioned me to lay down my life for his sheep.  Ultimately, this is evident even in the fact that I am dependent upon their faithfulness even for the daily needs of my family.  The collar, representing the collar of a slave, is a helpful way of expressing this, both for me and my family, and for the flock.  

3.      The Public Value of Wearing a Clerical Collar 

The clerical collar is not a dead symbol in this culture.  Everybody knows what it means.  Is there potential for misunderstanding?  Of course.  They could assume that I’m a liberal Episcopalian.  People could assume that I am a Roman Catholic priest who happens to be wearing a gold band on the ring finger of his left hand.  But the secularization of the culture actually helps me at this point.  Everybody knows that the collar means, but very few people apparently are prepared to associate it with a particular tradition.   I’ve heard numerous stories about men who have been approached by people precisely because they were wearing a collar and were, as such, recognized as pastors.  I even know of a man who began wearing his collar in public full time after a woman at an office supply store asked him to pray for her when she saw that he was using a church credit card to make his purchase.  These sorts of things happen all the time. It is good for the people with whom I come into contact each day to recognize me as a pastor.  People remember me when I see them again—when I might never have been remembered otherwise.  The owner of the McAlister’s Deli always says “Glad to see you again” when I go in there, and he recognizes me because of how I am dressed. I had some folks approach me at a garage sale and ask me “Where is your parish?”.  So I make it a point, when I can, to go to the grocery store and hardware store and beer store and gas station in my neighborhood so that I can become known as the “pastor who lives in this neighborhood”.  Hopefully, as it has for other men, this will open up opportunities for me to serve my neighbors and live out the gospel. The collar has the additional advantage of making me approachable.  I am a pretty big guy, and I can be a fairly imposing figure.  Not only that, but although I would say I am generally cheerful (and by God’s grace will continue to become moreso) I am not someone who exudes the sort of easygoing friendliness that makes some people easy to approach and talk to.  But wearing a public sign of my office can override things that make me someone that people might otherwise be reticent to approach for help, counsel, or conversation.   

4.      The Personal Value of Wearing a Clerical Collar  

Obviously related to the above, my wearing a collar has great value for me personally.  It is an excellent tool for accountability.  Everybody recognizes that I am a pastor.  This has had a pretty serious influence on how aware I am of what I do, where I go, what I say, and how I behave in public.  I think twice about what I rent from the video store, I think twice about getting annoyed when someone cuts me off in traffic, I am forced to remember to be amiable in my public dealings with people, and how I act toward my family.  I wasn’t going around engaging in overt acts of wickedness before, but the veil of anonymity made it easy for me to go out in public without the conscious awareness that I am going into public as a pastor, and everything I do matters.  No more.  The fact that people do a “double take” just about everywhere I go, the fact that people stare at me, sometimes as if I were some kind of a freak, the fact that I caught people wandering by my cart at Wal-Mart one day and inspecting it, ostensibly to see “what the guy in the collar is buying”, makes anonymity impossible.  And that is a good thing, because honestly, I’d rather be anonymous. On top of this, the placement of the collar is not accidental.  It is positioned right over my larynx, and it is not the most comfortable thing I’ve ever worn.  As such it constantly reminds me that when I speak, I must speak as “the oracles of God”.  It reminds me that my speech must always be seasoned with salt, and that everything I say must be to the glory of God.  Of course this is true for everyone—but as the shepherd goes, so go the sheep, and no one ought to deny that there is a greater responsibility placed upon those who have been set apart for this work in a special way. 

5.      The Benefit of a Uniformed Ministry to the Church 

Leonard Payton, in a lecture you can download here, tells the story of a collared pastor going to visit one of his parishioners in a convalescent home.  The parishioner, a 92 year old woman suffering from fairly severe dementia, does not know her own daughter, but recognizes her pastor by the clothes that he wears as one of the seven pastors she’s had in her life, and calls him by several of their names.  But she trusts him, and as he leads her through the liturgy, the trust that her earlier pastors earned from her, the one who baptized her, the one who officiated at her wedding, the one who buried her husband, is bequeathed to the one who has been entrusted with her care right here at the end.  And she knows that he is one of them because of the familiar white tab tucked into the straight collar of his shirt. I am the first pastor of Trinity Covenant Church.  But Lord willing, I won’t be the last.  The many children that I have had the privilege of baptizing thus far in my ministry will probably long outlive me.  I will have to hand over the care of their souls to other men, men who will have to earn the trust of their congregation just as I do, but men who can also benefit from what I have done.  In a situation like the one Mr. Payton relates, a visible sign of our shared responsibility for the flock can go a long way, and so, for the sake of the church, I wear a collar, and will encourage other men entering the ministry to do so as well, particularly those who will follow after me here at TCC. 

6.      Two reasons that are not to be taken seriously 

A.  I will never, ever, have to wear a tie again.  Ever.  Amen. 

B. Finally, I would point out that my wife was raised a Roman Catholic, and it totally creeps her out when I wear the black shirt and white collar, which is pretty funny.