Reevaluating the pastoral identity

Like many who've been in ministry since the 1960s, I find myself repeating what I've heard similar aged colleagues say: that ministry these days is simply quite different from what it was three or four decades ago.

Though we may not always have welcomed it, some change has been sorely needed and intentionally initiated. Other changes just seem to have been dumped in our laps. Independent of our needs and desires, they've shouldered their way in on the heels of alternative worldviews that science, materialistic technology, and communication have recently been offering the world with increasing persuasiveness.

These influences have negatively affected the way in which increasing numbers of people both in the world and in the Church, view the Church and its clergy. Most significantly, the negative expressions directed at ministers are impacting the way we clergy view ourselves and the essential nature of our work.

In the face of these pressures, we fee! significant urges to redirect the negative images of us and our calling, and to do things to shore up our image and that of the church; things that we might not do were it not for the pressures we feel. To a large extent, it is the things we have done in response to these pressures that have gone far in changing some of the directions of the church and resetting the priorities of Christian ministry.

Following this line of thinking, many of us see validity in the following unfavorable assessment: "North American Christianity has become a consumerist menu of personal spiritual-care products intended to assure eternal life at minimal cost to the customer."¹ If we assume the basic accuracy of this description, we can readily see how it would affect and even permeate the way pastors might act, react, and feel about their calling, and thus how the resulting ministry might strike the aver age person on the street, especially over the long haul.

Closely related to this, we must challenge ourselves to be much less concerned about the matter of our popularity as pastors, and much more focused on the matter of respect for the pastor. We have to honestly address the disturbing question of the value that is actually placed upon authentic pastoral ministry in the Church and in the world, and what part we clergy have actually played in influencing the worth people assign to Christian ministry here and now.

As we know, the desire to be admired and liked can cause us to become soft on the issues of truth, and over-conceding when it comes to the basic principles that guide a life authentically lived for Jesus Christ. Without realizing it we can evolve into glad-handers and back-slappers, rather than the strong, compassionate spiritual leaders people look to in their crises and in their conscious or unconscious search for God and truth.

How immensely we need a fresh, revolutionary, and deeply biblical vision of what the ministry of Christ was and is actually all about, what we have actually been called to do and to be as ministers, and thus a reborn identity as Christ's shepherds, evangelists, prophets, priests, and teachers. And how immensely we need to respect ourselves and the ministry we are doing.

Beginning in this issue of Ministry, the six-part series by Miroslav Kis will call us to this every other month throughout 2004, even though it focuses primarily on the issue of the pastor and sexual ethics. Here's a sampling from this month's inaugural article: "Can any one of us conjure up ... the full scope and magnitude of the ministerial calling, our own calling? The kind of person the minister is called to be does not come naturally.... Is it possible for our human minds to ponder the intensity of energy all elements of a pastoral identity bring together as they converge and concentrate in the pastor's persona? . . . [Our work and identity is] staggering when combined with the awesomeness of the call to be 'holy to the Lord . ..' This might not be the usual way a pastor thinks of himself [or herself], but this seems to be the biblical outline of the pastoral character and task. No other profession, no other role requires so much investment on God's part in the human mind and heart."²

If you are like I am, this description of the minister's role and identity is deeply moving. It evokes in me deep desires for a kind of servanthood that will effectively live down the insipid ministry done on the "road more traveled." It calls me to live up to the essence of God's actual call to be a real Christian minister and practice real Christian ministry.