I am a pastor. I’m not more than a pastor, but I’m not less than a pastor. If you are reading this, you are most likely a pastor, or at least an aspiring pastor in seminary, or you’re praying about leaving your established career to become a pastor. Whatever you are or want to become, pastor is probably part of you. Really, who else would choose to read this?
Specifically, I am a 21st century pastor in America. This is important. One can bemoan the surrounding culture and narrative, or embrace it wholeheartedly, but one cannot ignore the culture in which one is pastoring. For me, and mostly likely for you, this means the idea of success, or growing numerically and financially are determinative factors for a job well done. Alternatively, this means pastoring a smaller church of 20-100 people and struggling to ‘do’ ministry for lack of funds is the determinative factor for being a failure at the pastoral vocation, or a faithful shepherd, depending on your understanding of pastoral vocation.
Before we get too far along, you should know that like every pastor in America, I pray the church where I pastor grows. I pray for confessions of faith to occur and baptisms to follow (in my baptistc tradition). I pray our resources would grow so that my church can minister more effectively to our community and the world. I’m not opposed to church growth. I pray for it, strategize for it, and long to see it realized, but not at all costs. I believe there are two main tribes that define the pastoral vocation in America. The successful pastor and the faithful pastor.
In the first tribe, the pastor is described as the CEO. The pastor doesn’t do what some call pastoral ministry (hospital visits, shut-in care, etc.), the pastor has more important things to do. The pastor should lead the organization to reach its full potential. The pastor should preach out of this world sermons that resemble TedTalks, which will make more people want to show up every week for more content. The pastor should invest most of his or her time in the Sunday morning worship extravaganza, making it the biggest attraction in the town, city, county, or state to attract more people. But the pastor should not waste his or her time with people, who will inevitably make their lives miserable. The pastor invests in a few talented leaders, who invest in others. This is practical ministry that gets things done, just like Moses set systems in place for the health of the people of Israel so too does the pastor set systems in place for the health of the church. This, you see, is successful ministry.
For others, the pastor is a shepherd. The pastor doesn’t worry with frivolous things like growth, if for no other reason than his or her church isn’t growing. Jeremiah had one convert you know, maybe two if you count the guy who helped him out of the well…To be a pastor is to be with people who will inevitably make their lives miserable, because they have to meet all their needs, be at all the parties, fully submerged in the life of the congregation, until it dies along with the soul of the pastor. The pastor is with the people, and the pastor can only be with so many people. This way of pastoring points to the incarnation of Jesus; the word made flesh who dwells among us. This, you see, is faithful ministry.
To be fair, I have been part of both pastoral tribes and I’m not sure anyone in either tribe would describe their vision of the pastoral vocation in those words. I was in the second tribe, the faithful tribe, in Bible college when pastoral ministry wasn’t quite a vocation, but rather an ideal. I was part of a successful church and was continually disillusioned to it. Messages based on movies… Need I say more? I reacted to the church of which I was part. There was no depth. There was nothing in it which nourished my soul. I mean, anyone can teach me to better steward my money… you know like a financial advisor. I was in college learning to study the Bible, reading church history and coming to terms with a robust faith and theology that seemed to get in the way of success. So, I reacted. I wanted to be faithful.
Eventually, I swapped teams and put on my successful tribe jersey. This swap occurred while in seminary and working in a church. I started out as the part-time youth pastor. My first youth group meeting was packed with 8 students. Within the year, my youth group meeting was full of students, literally spilling out into the hall. Our youth group room couldn’t handle 80 people… and now, I had tasted the theology of success firsthand. My vocational position changed from a part-time youth pastor to an associate pastor, and was committed to successful ministry. More is better. Bigger is better. I was committed to growing our church, after all I like being successful.
The American dream of success doesn’t seem to do justice to the pastoral vocation. The Christian faith is incarnational. The Christian faith demands we care for people and souls. Therefore, the pastor can’t care about personal success more than he or she cares for those people to whom the pastor is called to pastor. On the other hand, the Christian faith throughout the centuries has been expressed in local bodies of Jesus followers who have made disciples and the church has grown. Numerical growth is important if we take the idea of eternal separation from God seriously. I don’t know many pastors who want the masses to go to hell, but the faithful pastor doesn’t have the time to worry with that. Afterall, they are involved in the lives of their sheep…
I believe we have let the American dream of success define the terms of pastoral vocation. The successful pastor embraces the American ideal, growth at all costs. The faithful pastor reacts to this ideal but is nonetheless influenced by it. Therefore, to be a successfully faithful pastor is to be unsuccessful in the American economy. Is there a better way to understand the pastoral vocation? Is there a more biblically nuanced way to understand the pastoral vocation?
Currently, I am pursuing a doctorate and pastoring a small New England church and I have become dissatisfied with the successful and faithful idea of pastoral vocation. Maybe you have too. If yes, let’s go on a journey together and attempt to let God’s Word and Spirit define the vocation of pastor, while keeping in mind our culture and place.
The next post will on who the pastor is, I think… then we will think about what the pastor should do.