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Contemporary pastors are beset by a bewildering range of congregational and
denominational expectations. Demands on pastors' time and energy include regular
visitation and successful stewardship programs, membership growth and an efficient
committee structure, presbytery service and good sermons, community outreach, and
an attractive program for children and youth. The list is endless.
The difficulty goes deeper, however. Beneath every demand on time and energy
lies the reality that the vocational core of ministry is no longer discernible.
Because the church does not have a cohesive understanding of ministry that can
be shared by pastors in congregational settings, pastors are presented with an
unstable bundle of disparate images, each depicting the essence of ministry: preacher, teacher, community builder, programmer, marketer, therapist, change agent, care giver, manager, entrepreneur, the
list goes on! These images are more than another collection of tasks, however.
They are comprehensive models of ministry that offer competing options without
a compelling rationale for choice.
The difficulty goes even deeper. Those who might be expected to help pastors
out of this confusion are themselves enmeshed in the disorder. The church does
not have a cohesive understanding of ministry because it lacks a cohesive understanding
of itself. A church pulled by jumbled understandings of its life proposes ever-changing,
competing understandings of the pastoral vocation. Professors seek to prepare
persons for ministry, yet find the church incapable of providing a consistent
vision of the pastoral life. Church officials attempt to encourage and develop
pastors and congregations who are pursuing confused and incompatible visions of
congregational vitality.
Pastoral uncertainty in the face of competing models of ministry is fostered
by educational and ecclesiastical systems that lack a comprehensive vision of
pastoral identity. The existing pastoral-ecclesial culture is inadequate to aid
men and women in their quest for a congruent, richly contoured vocational purpose.
Recruitment and education, supervision and credentialing, and oversight and support
are all disordered by uncertainty about the shape of ministerial practice.
Uncertainty about pastoral practice is related to a deeper difficulty. Many
congregations and judicatories lack a cohesive, compelling vision of the Christian
life — deeply shared faith, consistent practices and coordinated mission.
An indiscriminate range of ecclesiastical and pastoral options encourages congregational
perplexity about ecclesial identity and organizational purpose. Many contemporary
pastors are affected by congregational and judicatory confusion even as they participate
in its perpetuation.
Good ministry
Excellence in pastoral ministry is grounded in the central theological vocation
of all ministry — serious, sustained attention to the core of Christian faith. The
theological vocation of pastors should not be confused with academic vocation.
Rather, the church's ministry is constituted by the calling to know, understand,
and set forth the gospel through word and sacrament. Good ministry involves many
personal qualities and organizational activities for which there are generally
accepted criteria. Unless these qualities and activities are shaped by the gospel,
however, they are not characteristics of good ministry.
Serious, sustained attention to the core of Christian faith is the sine qua
non of good ministry. Ministry's indispensable focus on the core of Christian
faith is sustained by discrete marks of pastoral excellence.
Discernment
Ministers are called to disciplined apprehension of the gospel, the culture, and
the church. Such apprehension depends upon continuous probing of Scripture and
tradition, ongoing analysis of contemporary culture and persistent analysis of
the wider church and the actual congregation.
Practices
Ministers engage in a broad range of Christian practices and a narrower range
of specifically pastoral practices. These practices are diverse, ranging through
reading, care for the body, hospitality, visiting the sick and more. Christian
practices become specifically pastoral practices as they are focused by the calling
to discernment. Christian practices embody the gospel. Thus, discernment shapes
and is shaped by intentional Christian ministerial practices.
Spiritual wholeness
Pastoral ministry is "a hard way to make a living." Good ministers are
aware of their need to receive grace, love and communion as well as give it.
Spiritual disciplines — grounded in Scripture and prayer — are essential
elements that nourish pastors' faith, engender pastors' hope and prompt pastors'
love.
Priorities
It is a managerial truism that successful workers are able to prioritize. The
priorities of good ministry, however, are shaped less by organizational imperatives
than by the wisdom of pastoral discernment and the nurture of pastoral practices.
They are neither reactive to organizational pressures nor driven by institutional
imperatives. Rather, they are ordered by regular theological discernment and recurring
Christian-pastoral practices.
Personal integrity
Serious, sustained attention to the foundations of Christian faith makes possible
a quality of ecclesial discernment that is grounded in Christian and pastoral
practices, nourished by spiritual disciplines and shaped by appropriate priorities.
All of this helps to constitute an "order of life" that is marked by
fidelity to the One who calls and to the ones who are called.
Pastoral excellence is not a self-sufficient objective, of course. Good ministry
is for the sake of good congregations. Pastoral discernment, practices, wholeness,
priorities, and integrity nurture congregational discernment, practices, wholeness,
priorities and integrity. Good ministry leads a congregation beyond its present
into a more fully gospel-shaped future.
Theological vocation — teaching office
Pastors are at the center of congregations. Congregations are the basic and
fundamental form of religious institutions. Religious institutions are significant
forces for nurturing societal wholeness. These three integrated convictions point
to the reality that pastoral excellence cannot be sustained apart from a cohesive
approach to the pastoral-ecclesial system. We are convinced that such an approach
must seek to recover the broad theological vocation of pastors within a sustaining
ecclesial culture of pastor/congregation, theological professor/seminary, and
church official/judicatory. A cohesive, theological approach to the pastoral-ecclesial
system will encourage and sustain pastoral excellence, congregational excellence,
educational excellence and church institutional excellence.
As ministers claim and deepen their vocation to "think the faith,"
they are better able to discern the shape of distinctly Christian pastoral and
congregational life in the midst of disparate cultural and ecclesial claims. Pastoral
discernment that encourages congregational discernment is necessary for the church's
renewal in the gospel. By underscoring the pastoral-ecclesial system, we recognize
that pastoral ministry is either enhanced or inhibited by its relationship to
other significant loci of ministry.
Although pastors are the focal point of Re-Forming Ministry, church officials
and seminary faculty are not merely supporting players. Sustaining ecclesially
oriented excellence among professors and church officials bears independent value.
However, like efforts to sustain pastoral excellence, efforts with faculty and
church officials will have deeper, more enduring results when they are integrated
into a comprehensive engagement of the broad pastoral-ecclesial system. |
