Who is sufficient for these things?" (2 Cor. 2:16). The context of Paul's question is ministry, and the implied answer is "No one," including the apostle himself.
This is a point every pastor needs to keep in mind; for in a very real sense no human being is competent to hold ministerial office. We can always find faults with pastors. They never do enough, never fin ish the job, never do it as well as it should be done. Paul's letters to Corinthian parishioners remind us that they were attacking his ministerial competency, and he agrees with them that he is not "equal to such a task" (2 Cor. 2:16, NIV).
So we should not be surprised when parishioners suggest that a pastor has failed in some way. Pastors are not sufficient for the task given to them. They never have been. They never will be. The human problem is too big, human nature is too disabled, human beings are too perverse for pastors to be "all things to all people," even though pastors might try their best.
The Corinthians weren't satisfied with Paul, and the Jews weren't satisfied with Jesus. The people who are most vocal in their complaints about a pastor's ministry may be the very people who most need to receive that ministry. We must beware of judging pastoral competency on the basis of how popular the pastor is. Popular opposition may not mean pastoral incompetency, just as popular acclaim may not mean that the pastor is doing God's work. Pastors must not be put in the position of appeasing complainers or satisfying customers, or they may as well become shopkeepers. The essence of any professional is that he or she does not simply do what people want but rather what people need. Doctors won't prescribe a drug or a therapy unless they think it is needed, no matter how much patients fuss and com plain. The doctor must, for obvious reasons, make an honest diagnosis regardless of the anxiety it will cause a patient.
Having recognized this reality, how ever, we must also acknowledge that not all pastors are equally capable. A pastor may be capable of pastoring one church and not another, and this factor in itself has little to do with the question "Is the pastor competent?" We have, then, at least two questions to answer: First, is there some way to assess relative pastoral competency? Second, is there some way to determine whether what appears to be pastoral incompetency is instead a poor pastor-congregation match?
Competency and ordination
We know that not all pastors are equally capable. However, there should be some minimum competency without which no one should become a pastor. We should never ordain anyone unless we are sure of the individual's ability to pastor a congregation to shepherd a flock adequately, to hold it together, to care for its needs, and to help it to grow. In part, ordination is the church's public recognition that God has called an individual for the pastoral ministry. Individuals may claim that God has called them to the pastoral office, but it is up to the church to deter mine whether they are correct in their perception of the calling. If the church determines that there is good evidence that God has, in fact, called that person to pastoral ministry, then the church moves ahead to ordain. If the church is not convinced, then there should be no ordination.
Two centuries ago John Wesley explained how the Methodist church should determine whether or not a person is called to pastoral ministry. Those examining candidates for ordination should ask three questions: (1) Does the candidate know Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord? (2) Does the person have the gifts for ministry? (3) Does the person have fruit in their ministry?
The first question leads to an inquiry about the candidate's relationship with the Lord. Is it one of love, faith, peace, and joy? Does it involve knowing Jesus personally? Is it one of total commitment, involving a continuing walk with the Lord? If it is determined that the candidate does not have a healthy, growing, mature relationship with Christ, we should deny ordination, no matter how much evidence of "success" there might be.
The second question involves natural and acquired gifts or abilities to minister. Can the prospective candidates for ministry discern theological error? Do they know their Bible? How well do they communicate? What are their sermons like? Do they have skills in counseling, leadership, and interpersonal relationships? And so on.
The third question examines the record. What have the candidates done in ministry? What were the results? Is it really proper for the church to ordain a person who has never actually pastored a congregation? Anyone who claims to be called to minister must have borne fruit in their ministry. The fruit need not be merely numerical, but there are other factors that bear witness to a call to ministry.
Tests of competency
But suppose we have pastors who are accused of incompetence. How can we determine whether they are so or not?
One way would be to repeat the ordination examination (the one that should have taken place, and perhaps did not, prior to ordination). A committee of ordained pastors might examine the pastor in question on three fronts: personal spiritual health, abilities for ministry, and results. If it is determined that the persons would not at this point qualify for ordination, they would be given the option of finding a call out of the conference to another conference with fewer demanding standards or of early retirement/resignation/termination from the ministry. This would be analogous to a state licensing board revoking a license to practice (medicine, law, counseling). If the committee determined that the person was competent but unfortunately matched to the wrong congregation, they could recommend to administration a better match. The review committee should be composed of peers, not administrators and not laity. If the three questions cited above are the basis of inquiry, the church at large has adequate input into the process. If it is argued that employment decisions cannot be decided by peers, I would argue that the peer group is not deciding an employment question but the question of competency relative to licensure. If a given conference administration wishes to hire pastors certified by their peers as incompetent, they may certainly do so. If administration refuses to employ pastors deemed incompetent by their peers, I doubt any court would consider that unreasonable.
Ordination is the certificate of pastoral competency. If that competency is lost, ordination should be revoked. However, that is a serious decision that requires ad equate review by a board of ordained pastors. Once revoked, the person may continue to practice ministry under a different kind of ministerial credential as an "unlicenced" minister, while working toward reordination. That decision would be up to conference administration and the executive committee. But there is no escaping the fact that pastoral competency and ordination are inextricably linked. They must go together or they both become farcical. "Incompetent ordained pastor" should be an oxymoron. If there has been no adequate ordination process to screen out incompetent pastors prior to ordination, we should certainly institute a process for reviewing ordained pastors accused of incompetence with the possibility of removing their ordination. To fail to do so would be irresponsible to the church and to the Lord and would be to hold a lower standard of professionalism than is held for the many professionals among whom we pastor.
Dealing with incompetent pastors
A question that many conferences face is too many pastors on the payroll. This means that cuts, if they must be made, must be made from among the less able workers. No amount of rhetoric can cover that stark reality. It is better to face it openly and honestly. The most direct approach would be the establishment of a ranking system for pastors. Every pastor in the conference would be listed in rank order from the most competent to the least competent. Every one would understand that release from work, if it must be done, would be done from the bottom of the list up. If it were argued that this is brutal, I would reply that this is what we do anyway, we just don't admit to it. If we did it openly, people would at least know where they stand and could act to change their ranking.
If pastors are notified that they are ranked at the bottom of the list and that they are the ones who will be cut if financial exigency warrants, they might be induced to get some remedial help or take up another career or find another place to work. If they felt such a ranking was unfair, they could protest it by demonstrating just what it is they do with their time and why they have so little evidence of fruitfulness.
Assessing competence
What constitutes competency for a pastor? How can competency be assessed? The human resources department of one large North American conference suggests that competency consists in fulfilling one's job description. Which job description? The conference job description: pastor the church, increase the membership and the tithe, keep people happy so they don't bother administration with complaints? The congregation's job description: be our pastor, love us and care for us, visit us frequently, hold our hands through various crises, preach interesting sermons that don't offend us, represent us worthily to the community, assure us that we are where we ought to be, keep our kids interested in the church for us, and manage the church well? The pastor's own job description: be a successful pastor, be all things to all people, make everyone like you and think of you as a very spiritual person, don't offend any one if it can be helped, keep peace in the congregation, and make the church grow numerically as the chief indicator of your success?
Unfortunately, such is not the New Testament vision for Christian ministry. A brief review of the history of pastoral theology shows how the expectations of church and society have influenced the expectations directed at the pastor.
From the close of New Testament times to the Middle Ages, we see a transition in pastoral theology. The fathers of the early church envisioned the pastoral task as a shepherding task: to instruct and care for the sheep and to be wise and holy so as to love the sheep and provide for their welfare unreservedly. Gradually the formalization of priestly function led to a more sacrament-centered pastoral theology in which the pastor was a dispenser of God's grace through the sacraments, and the disparity rather than the similarity of laity and clergy was emphasized. By the end of this period, the pastorate was much more akin to the Old Testament priesthood than to the New Testament model of every Christian a minister and a priest.
During the Middle Ages, the ministry became even more consolidated in bureaucracy and sacerdotalism. Pastors were either bureaucrats of the church or priests who dispensed the sacraments. Throughout this period, the concept of ministry was in dire need of reform.
That reform finally came with the Reformation. Luther's emphasis on justification by faith as the "article of the standing or falling church" reformulated the ministry as it swept through the theology of the church. Pastors were transformed into proclaimers of good news and teachers of Christian duty.
The tendency to drift back to medieval pastoral theology was reversed by the evangelical awakening of the eighteenth century. Once again the necessity for pastors to be preachers of righteousness, patient teachers, godly examples of holy living, and zealous evangelists was held up before the church.
The rational and scientific age of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries had its impact on pastoral theology. In essence, the social sciences subverted the role of the pastor. The pastor became a counselor, a manager and administrator, a social engineer, a recreation director, and a leader. The pastoral counseling movement threatened to take over pastoral theology. Liberal, humanistic, naturalistic presuppositions stripped the ministry of its supernatural aspects, even as they stripped God of His mystery.
The biblical job description for pastors is found in Ephesians 4. This revolves around the tasks of equipping the saints for ministry, preaching, prayer, and spiritual direction. Pastors who perform this job description are competent. If we are going to be biblical in our assessment of competence, we had better begin with a biblical job description rather than one we borrow from the world of business or one we fabricate in our heads out of our own style conscious desires. Ultimately, the only question that really matters is whether pastors are doing God's will, not whether they are pleasing the conference, the congregation or the community.
Real pastoral competence
The apostle Paul, after acknowledging "that we are [not] competent in ourselves," states that "our competence comes from God. He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant" (2 Cor. 3:5,6, NIV). Though no man or woman "is equal to such a task" (2 Cor. 2:16, NIV), God gives us competence. This competence consists in the ability to lift up Christ, "for we do not preach ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. For God, who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness,' made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ" (2 Cor. 4:5,6, NIV).
We may not gain notoriety as great pastors. We may appear ignorant or simple or rough. People may find fault with us and accuse us of incompetence, but none of that matters if only Jesus is lifted up so people can see the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. "We have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us" (2 Cor. 4:7, NIV). Some may look at the jar of clay and say "incompetent pas tor" while others may see the treasure and say "Glory to God." We must determine whether the jar of clay is doing its job. If not, it is incompetent. If so, it is competent even though it is merely a jar of clay. And the job is not merely pleasing people or raising money or simply increasing the membership of the church, but the job of exalting Jesus so that people see the treasure, live for God and give glory to Him.
