When I was a first-year seminarian, one of our professors told us that we had to become comfortable in our own skin. He advised us to buy a clerical shirt and go walk around the mall. Of course, it’s awkward to do this for the first time. People look at you. You feel weird. But it’s an important rite of passage to begin to see oneself leaving the secular world and being formed into a pastor, leaving behind the old life, and becoming a fisher of men.

The reactions that one gets varies, depending on time and place.

My first time wearing a clerical shirt was more than 20 years ago, and culturally-speaking, it might as well be a hundred years. In the present, the Church is increasingly pressed to the margins. Christians are more and more hated. Pastors are targets of the devil’s wrath as much now as in any time in recent years.

Of course, it’s easy to bury one’s talent and cover up one’s vocation. It’s a simple thing to hide one’s discomfort in one’s own skin, which is to say, to lurk around like Peter in denial of who one is, as one who is linked to Jesus in hostile times: to just dress like everyone else and fly under the radar.

One of our professors who was retiring (an ordained man who never wore clericals) even mocked pastors and seminarians who wore the collar as he preached a final sermon at chapel. Men of his generation really seem to have a hang-up about it. Of all the things to say in his final proclamation of Jesus to seminarians, he just felt compelled to take that swipe.

Early in my ministry, the older pastors mocked their typically-younger colleagues who wore the black shirt outside of the Sunday service. The older pastors were generally well-heeled and sported the suit and tie, or perhaps a polo shirt and khaki pants. I even had a lay church worker on one occasion joining the fun by mocking the “blackshirts” as well.

I attended a district convention a couple years out of seminary, and I remember being in the minority as a pastor wearing a clerical shirt. I left the elevator, and a gaggle of my “brothers” mocked me on the way out with a snarky comment and laughter. Cowards. They literally waited until the door was closing to take their Parthian shot. I suspect there were low testosterone issues. Somebody, after all, is buying the product from Pfizer that is not a Covid vaccination.

I remember older pastors, and even district presidents, who insisted on dressing like the laity and introducing themselves by their first names. It was an affectation of the Woodstock and Casual Friday generation. It certainly gave the impression that these men were not comfortable in their own skin, but sought to blend in with the salesmen, bankers, and CEOs, not desiring the target on the back or the burden of everyone knowing that they were supposedly Jesus’ called servants, fishers of men.

Thankfully, as pastors of a certain age have been riding into the sunset, heading to the glue factory, and being replaced by younger pastors, this kind of nonsense is going the way of the rotary phone and bell bottoms. But there are still a few of these insufferable types in circulation.

Not too long ago, I was out of town and attended a congregation that was recommended. Unbeknownst to me, the pastor took a call, and the parish was then being served by a baby-boomer interim. My wife and a friend were sitting with me in the pew. We were dressed for church. I was in my clericals. The pastor came to our pew and right away started with the clerical jokes: “You wear your clericals on vacation? Do you sleep in them?”

OK Boomer.

Next, he explained that he had served previously in a southern state where if he wore clericals, people would think he was an exorcist. He crossed his index fingers as if warding off a demon. I wanted to say, “Well, you are an exorcist.” But I opted for politely smiling instead.

Thanks be to God that this kind of buffoonery and cluelessness is on the wane. Younger pastors are indeed more comfortable in their skin. Unlike their retirement-aged colleagues, they have read the passage in Bo Giertz’s Hammer of God in which the older pastor addresses a younger colleague who desires to be seen just as an ordinary person, and was refusing to wear his clericals. He said:

Would you respect an officer who as a matter of principle appeared at maneuvers in mufti? Or a Salvation Army soldier who doffed his uniform when his corps was assembled in the market square?” Torvik was becoming irritated. “You must certainly understand that I want to come as an ordinary human being.” But the rector continued his argument. “Then you are sailing under false colors. You are no ordinary person. You have been ordained by the Church as a servant of the Word. You have been elected and called by the Christian congregation at Ödesjö to be its pastor. You get support from the fields which godly forbears donated for the pastor’s upkeep. It is pure dishonesty to take the money, if you want to be just an ordinary person.”

Clerical garb, whether a clerical shirt and collar or a cassock, is a kind of uniform. It identifies the office that the man holds. Can you imagine a United States Marine who would be embarrassed to wear his dress blues? Can you imagine a pilot in the Air Force who would be ashamed to sport his wings? Even Muslim women are comfortable enough in their own skin to wear an identifying mark of their religious beliefs - even while eating at a fast-food restaurant or shopping. One would think that Christian pastors - especially those of us who come from a tradition of a “uniform” - would be comfortable enough in our skin to be identified as one of Christ’s men, a shepherd of the church, one who is under holy orders to preach, teach, absolve, and administer sacraments.

I’m being a bit rough on the boomers here, and I want to acknowledge that there are exceptions to the insufferable nature of their generational culture. That generation had (and has) its own rebels and non-conformists in the ranks. Many of our editors at Gottesdienst took on their contemporaries at a time when it was very unpopular to do so, when defying the general culture in Lutheran circles caused pastors to pay a price, whether it be personal or professional. These men paved the way for those of us who came along later, even as many of us are now seen as “elder statesmen” by confessional pastors currently coming out of seminary.

We are grateful for the guys who took the slings and arrows of a culture formed by Vatican II, by Roman Catholic priests in suits and ties and nuns in blue jeans, by the dumbing down of liturgy and hymnody, and the uglification of church architecture. It took courage to stand up to the pietistic and bureaucratic powers-that-be before they started walking with canes and inserting hearing aids.

The pendulum is thankfully coming back in the other direction. Younger Lutherans generally don’t want non-liturgical worship, nor do they want pastors who are not comfortable in their skin. We are living in dark times. Being identified as a pastor is often uncomfortable. And this is exactly why the members of the ministerium need to be courageous and comfortable in their own skin. We need to be easily identifiable to Christians everywhere. We need to be willing to be identified as one of Jesus’ men, to be clearly marked as such, to friend and foe alike.

We are at war. And we are the shepherds, the officers, the ones charged with putting our hat on our sword and riding to the sound of the guns. This is not a time for timidity. We must put on the whole armor of God, which for us pastors, includes the insignia of our office. And in the words of the old song:

With our front in the field, swearing never to yield,
Or return like the Spartan in death on our shield.

Of course, I’m not trying to set a law and say that we should never dress causally at any time. But increasingly, we are being called to be pastors everywhere - not just on Sunday morning in the chancel. And so when we are going to be in public, whether at the grocery store, the restaurant, or the airport, we would do well to consider putting on the uniform and being comfortable in our own skin. And as for those respectability-seeking haters and hiders, they are increasingly dropping out of sight, and even those who remain are increasingly impotent. Let their casual culture die off with them. And instead, may our young (and not so young) pastors gird up their loins, be comfortable in their own skin, and be prepared to hoist the black flag and go into mortal combat against the devil, at any time and in any place.