A pastoral tug of war...

The old saying, "When the student is ready, the Buddha will appear" continues to be true for me.  Not only has a new little (but quickly growing) puppy come into my life - helping me slow down and rest in the unforced rhythms of grace - but so, too with events, books and people.  Yesterday, for example, I read this from Eugene Peterson:

A tug of war takes place every week between pastor and people. The contest is over conflicting views of the person who comes to church. The result of the struggle is exhibited in the service of worship, shaping sermon and prayers, influencing gesture and tone.

People (and particularly people who come to church and put themselves in touch with pastoral ministry) see themselves in human and moral terms: they have human needs that need fulfilling and moral deficiencies that need correcting. Pastors see people quite differently. We see them in theological terms:  they are sinners - persons separated from God who need to be restored in Christ.  And these two views - the pastor's theological understanding of people and the people's self-understanding - are almost always in tension.

What I found valuable in Peterson's insight is simple:  I know myself to be a sinner - in this I am not at all different from the people I do ministry with and among - and most of the time I know the church to be a hospital for sinners, too.  But sometimes, when I get out of balance and the rush of expectations and needs start to feel oppressive to me, I forget this truth.  I can always tell when I am slipping out of balance because I start to resent the very people I have been called to love and challenge in the presence of Christ's grace. That is to say, when I give in to the contemporary understanding that the pastor must always be "a quivering mass of availability" (bless you, Stanley Hauerwas) - and then find myself pushing back and trying to get away - I know the problem is mine.

As a pastor himself, Peterson understands that this resentment happens all the time for those called to pastoral ministry.  Certainly in Scripture you can see this tension as far back as Moses and not much has changed.  Part of the problem, of course, has to do with the way being a pastor is different from doing a job.  Peterson writes:

The term pastor in our American culture does not name a vocation that carries with it a clear job description. This is probably right. Jobs have job descriptions. A job is an assignment to do that can be quantified and evaluated.  It is pretty easy to decide whether a job has been completed or not. It is pretty easy to tell whether a job is done well or badly.

But a vocation is not a job in that sense. I can be hired to do a job, paid a fair wage if I do it, dismissed if I don’t. But I can’t be hired to be a pastor, for my primary responsibility is not to the people I serve, but to the God I serve.  And as it turns out, the people I serve would often prefer an idol who would do what they want done rather than what the God revealed in Jesus wants them to do. In our present culture, the sharp distinction between a job and a vocation is considerably blurred. How do I prevent myself as a pastor from thinking of my work as a I job I get paid for, a job that is assigned to me by a denomination, a job that I am expected to do to the satisfaction of my congregation?  How do I stay attentive to and listen to the call that got me started in this way of life? This is not the call to help people feel good about themselves and have a good life or a call to use my considerable gifts and fulfill myself.  It is a call like Abraham’s, “to set out for a place… not knowing where he was going.” (Hebrews 11: 8) – a call to deny myself and take up my cross and follow Jesus (Matthew 16:24) – a call like Jonah’s to “go at once to Nineveh” (Jonah 1;1) which was a city he detested – a call like Paul’s to “get up and enter the city and you will be told what to do.” (Acts 9:6)

How do I keep the immediacy and authority of God’s call in my ears when an entire culture, both secular and ecclesial, is giving me a job description?  How do I keep the calling- the vocation of pastor – from being drowned by job descriptions gussied up in glossy challenges and visions and strategies clamoring incessantly for my attention?  (Eugene Peterson, “The Pastor: Shaping an Identity,” in For the Beauty of the Church.)

 

I have discovered that I get out of balance and allow myself to become confused about my identity as a pastor almost every year during our Stewardship drive.  As much as I know within that I can't grow a church all by myself, I always feel inadequate whenever we attempt to raise a budget.  Why can't we do more?  Why are we stuck?  What haven't I done to express the joy of giving?  And I know that there are always some in the leadership team who are thinking the same things.  So even though my calling is fundamentally to teach and preach and equip the saints with the skill necessary for ministry, at key times of real pressure and judgment I find myself losing perspective and falling into resentment.

 

That's why yesterday's insight spoke to me so profoundly:  "If a pastor finds himself resenting his people (sic), getting petulant and haranguing them, that is a sign that he or she has quit thinking of them as sinners who bring "nothing in themselves of worth" and has secretly invested them with divine attributes of love, strength, compassion and joy.  They, of course, do not have these attributes in any mature measure and so will disappoint him or her every time."  OMG, I thought, this guy has been reading my mail!  He not only grasps what it feels like to fall out of balance in ministry, he has diagnosed the root cause.

 

An understanding of people as sinners enables a pastoral ministry to function without anger. Accumulated resentment (a constant threat to pastors) is dissolved when unreal - that is, untheological - presuppositions are abandoned. If people are sinners then pastors can concentrate on talking about God;s action in Jesus Christ instead of sitting around lamenting how bad the people are.  We already know they can't make it. We have already accepted their sin. We didn't engage to be a pastor to relax in their care or entrust ourselves to their saintly ways... We have come among the people to talk about Jesus Christ. Grace is the main subject of pastoral conversation and preaching.

 

This not only lifts a burden from my soul, it creates the freedom to celebrate when grace and faith actually do break into our ordinary lives.  There is always something new to learn and practice on the way into the Lord's unforced rhyhms of grace.  So, I'm heading outside to rake leaves and play with the puppy.  My sermon is ready, the pastoral calls have been finished, we're ready for tomorrow's CROP Walk, the music has been practiced and prayers have been lifted up.  To head into the Sabbath is to trust in the Lord...