The pastorate is one of the few professions where the professional can aspire to be Renaissance person, someone who employs a number of skills and interests to serve God and neighbor.
—Paul Cedar
After I’d pastored Lake Avenue Congregational Church for about a year, Peter Wagner said to me, “I think the two toughest jobs in the world are being President of the United States and pastor of Lake Avenue Congregational Church.” I don’t know that Lake Avenue was tougher than other pastorates, but I am convinced he was at least partially right. The pastorate is among the most difficult vocations today.
To begin with, pastors rarely see their work neatly and tidily wrapped up. Just before I entered seminary, a veteran Wesleyan Methodist pastor took me by the arm and said, “There’s one thing I enjoy in the ministry more than anything else.”
He had a twinkle in his eye, so I knew he was setting me up. But I went for it: “What’s that?”
“Saturday mornings. That’s the morning I mow my lawn. It’s the one thing I do every week where I can look back and see what I accomplished.”
People are designed by God to receive satisfaction when they’ve accomplished a worthy task. Unfortunately, the pastorate is one of those vocations where the worthiest accomplishments—spiritual growth, for instance—are intangible. Bankers, carpenters, and printers get to see measurable, tangible results. But pastors often cannot. That can wear on them.
Add to that the constant daily pressures—sick to be visited, bulletins to be run, sermons to be written, hurt feelings to be soothed, church conflicts to be negotiated, budgets to be met, a community to be reached—and you’ve got a formula for rapid burnout.
It’s not unusual for pastors to succumb in this environment. Some look to sexual gratification to give comfort; others simply give up and quit; others still just slowly wear themselves out. I know one minister, a man with a tremendous pastor’s heart, whose ministry had a national reputation, who left the pastorate nearly a broken man. By God’s grace he has experienced considerable psychological and spiritual healing and has bounced back. But he remains a living reminder of the difficulty of being a pastor.
This reality of the pastoral life can be dealt with in a variety of ways. Certainly a deep prayer life goes a long way toward maintaining vibrancy and health. Yet I’ve also found that reminding myself of the unique aspects of pastoral ministry renews me in my calling.
In my ministry, I’ve pastored Methodist, Evangelical Free, congregational, and Presbyterian churches, in both the Midwest and the West Coast. I’ve worked in small congregations and large, and now I’m president of a denomination. As I’ve worked in a variety of settings, I’ve noticed certain common denominators of pastoral life that demonstrate the uniqueness of the pastoral calling.
A Renaissance Calling
In an age in which specialists abound, the pastorate requires a wide variety of skills. It’s one of the few professions where the professional can aspire to be Renaissance person, someone who employs a number of skills and interests to serve God and neighbor.
Pastors of smaller churches know this reality all too well. But even when I headed a church with a staff of seventeen, I believed it essential to encourage us all to remain generalists. Certainly, each staff person had his or her specialty. But I wanted each staff person to employ and constantly improve a variety of skills to accomplish his or her work.
For example, the pastor of music must be much more than an excellent musician. He or she must be a planner, coordinating worship activities with the senior pastor; a recruiter, inviting people to join choirs and orchestras; a people manager, directing a large number of people with a variety of ages and gifts; a financial manager, overseeing a significant budget; a master of ceremonies, leading public worship and congregational singing on special occasions; a negotiator, resolving conflicts and disagreements between people; and a pastor, caring for the members of the various musical groups of the church.
Now that’s a Renaissance person! And other staff positions are no different.
Entrance into People’s Private Lives
Few professionals in our society have an open invitation to their clients’ personal lives. Nor do many have the opportunity to be with people during critical life passages: birth, illness, marriage, death.
But the minister does.
This is so characteristic of our vocation that we call ourselves pastors. Most of us see ourselves as shepherds who personally watch over our people, know them individually, and share in their private lives. That’s a unique privilege we should never abandon.
Recently I visited a layman who is a national leader in his denomination. Over the years, he has been deeply involved in his local church as well as his denomination. He is a churchman in the best sense of the term.
With tears in his eyes, he told me how badly neglected he was feeling. He recently had undergone surgery, and the pastor did not make a hospital visit nor telephone nor even write a personal note.
The man was crushed: “I feel as though I don’t have a pastor. He is too busy with administration and preaching to care about people. I’m not the only one—many members of the congregation also are hurting because of the lack of pastoral care.”
I understand the pastor’s temptation to give himself fully to administration and preaching. Sometimes it feels like there’s just too much to do. But we give up an essential ministry when we give up pastoral care. Pastoral care is not only one of the greatest needs of our fast-growing, impersonal society, it is also a unique privilege of the pastor.
Public Proclamation to Those We Love
Naturally, one of the distinctive callings of the pastor is public proclamation. Other professionals speak publicly on issues concerning people’s lives, yet the pastor’s proclamation is unique. Not only do we speak about eternal matters, but we speak to people we love. We don’t preach to an audience nor to constituents but to brothers and sisters in the family of Christ. Each Sunday morning preachers look out on people they know and love.
When we forget that, our preaching becomes strained and impersonal. We’re more likely to fill our sermons with “shoulds” and “oughts.” We may start seeing the congregation as “them.” That attitude can quickly turn ministry into a dreary business of correcting wayward sinners.
We rarely choose this preaching style intentionally. Instead, it sneaks up on us, especially when we’re under pressure or when we overemphasize one aspect of preaching.
A couple of years ago, I received a letter from a couple in our congregation who begged me to start “loving them” from the pulpit rather than “scolding them.” I’d been preaching a series of messages on the minor prophets; my messages were likewise prophetic, although appropriate for the congregation. But somehow, in spite of my sincerity and fine exegesis, my preaching had become unbalanced—at least in their eyes.
I was reminded that even prophetic preaching should be communicated with love and grace, not only in my words but in my attitude and spirit.
Proclaiming the Word, then, is a special form of communication that only pastors enjoy. Besides giving people the words of eternal life, we give care from the pulpit—public personal care.
Spiritual Counseling
The longer I’m in the ministry, the more firmly I believe in pastoral counseling. I was not always so enthusiastic about it, however.
When I was in seminary, in the middle 1960s, psychology was just finding its way into seminary curriculum. As we studied this specialty, many of us students, without realizing it, developed inferiority complexes about counseling. Studying psychological literature inclined us to think that only those specially trained in psychology could provide first-rate, professional counseling.
Along the way in ministry, however, I realized that psychological counseling, as important as it is, could never replace pastoral counseling. Pastors can introduce a distinctive feature into counseling: a spiritual perspective.
Naturally, any Christian psychologist can do the same. But people who come to a pastor for counseling are more likely seeking spiritual as well as psychological guidance. If they were most concerned about psychological dynamics, they would probably go elsewhere. But when they want to understand the spiritual root of their psychological troubles, they often come to a pastor.
While helping couples resolve problems like communication and finances, I’ve often found their deepest problem is spiritual. Without a fundamental change of attitude, all my tips for them getting along better will amount to nothing.
For example, one couple came to me for crisis counseling late one New Year’s afternoon. I listened to their mutual accusations, and I was astounded when the wife began her complaints with their wedding day some twenty years before.
It became evident that the root problem was not her husband’s faults or her domineering and caustic manner. Both of them needed the same thing—to follow Jesus as Lord, to allow the Holy Spirit to pour love and patience into them. Over a period of weeks, I saw both finally repent and begin building their marriage on Jesus Christ.
At other times, what troubled people need more than anything is forgiveness—a spiritual “commodity.” They may need to learn communication skills and understand their past. But they also may need to be freed from resentment, or they may need to experience God’s forgiveness themselves. In the counseling setting, the pastor is in a singular position to speak of God’s forgiveness and to help people turn to Christ to help them forgive others.
I will never forget a young wife and mother who came to visit me several years ago. Her face was literally twisted in agony; she was carrying a burden that was destroying her. She shared with me something that she had never shared with anyone else:
While she was a teenager, she had become pregnant and had had an illegal abortion. Her parents had not known, nor had her friends, her husband, nor three children. She felt, though, she simply could not carry the burden any longer.
I had the privilege and delight of helping her ask God to forgive her. She was completely set free that morning by a loving and forgiving God. She left my study rejoicing and radiant. Never again did she have to look back at the burden of that sin.
So pastoral counseling has remained an important part of my ministry. In the larger church, I was limited as to how much counseling I could undertake. Nonetheless, even in a large church like Lake Avenue I made it a practice to see anyone who wanted to see me, although people might have to wait a few weeks for an appointment. I didn’t want to give up this unique pastoral opportunity to help people integrate the spiritual and psychological.
Vision Casting
There are not many professionals who have the privilege of setting and maintaining vision for their organizations. The pastor is one of them.
Vision casting is not simply icing on the pastoral cake. The church’s vitality depends on it. Lloyd Ogilvie at Hollywood Presbyterian Church used to talk about how some churches get in the habit of “clipping coupons on the past,” recalling endlessly the glory days of a church. That can undermine the ministry of the church and be corrected only when the pastor makes use of this particular privilege.
In one church I served, the congregation paid a great price for looking back. The previous pastor had not cast vision for the future, so by the time I arrived, we were several years late in beginning a new building program. In the meantime, as our community exploded in population, our little sanctuary stood at capacity. We failed to incorporate a large number of new people during that window of opportunity.
Vision casting is also vital to the financial health of a congregation. When a church is facing a financial challenge or crisis, the pastor is often the only one who can give leadership to the congregation by communicating effectively the church’s mission and the need for sacrifice. The pastor is the one who can keep the focus on ministry, as opposed to just raising funds.
I know of one congregation that was having trouble building a new sanctuary and sustaining their annual budget. Some trustees thought they should simply cut the budget. But the pastor convinced them they could raise the money if they communicated their situation honestly and candidly to the congregation.
So they did just that. In fact, the pastor became specific, tying the financial need to the mission of the church: “If we don’t receive more, we’ll have to cut back on one of the ministries of the church. In fact, we’ll have to lay off one of the pastoral staff.” When people saw the personal dimension of the problem and the ministry that would suffer, they perked up. They had a congregational meeting soon after that and in one night raised over half of the money they needed. A clear vision made a difference.
Laying before the church our mission is not only our privilege as pastors but an effective use of our pastoral position.
A Sacramental Presence
I don’t understand it fully, and it doesn’t always accord neatly with my Protestant theology, but it’s a reality I’ve experienced repeatedly in ministry: Pastors have a sacramental presence in certain situations. I’ve seen it happen at weddings, funerals, the commissioning of missionaries, and the ordination of ministers. I’ve experienced it especially during dedications, baptisms, and Communion.
Whether one calls them ordinances or sacraments or rites doesn’t matter. During such events, time touches eternity; the human and the sacred interact in a unique way. Although I fully affirm the priesthood of all believers, these are special moments in a pastor’s ministry when he or she acts like a priest for the people. Some people seem to need another to represent God in such settings, and so the minister becomes an instrument, a vehicle to communicate God’s presence and blessing at such times.
I find this is also true during people’s crises. We can send deacons and deaconesses by the dozens to the hospital to visit, for instance, but the pastor has a unique relationship to a parishioner facing an operation. Whether it’s good theology or not, people sense that a pastor represents God in a way other people do not.
For example, several years ago I visited parents whose son had just been killed in a motorcycle accident. I cried out to God, “Lord, what do I say? What do I do? How do I respond? If you’re not possessing me, if you’re not ministering through me, whatever I do is going to be inadequate. So guide me.”
In such situations, I’ve sometimes said many words and sometimes few. But even more important than my words has been my pastoral presence. It’s not that Paul Cedar was there; it’s that a minister of the gospel was there. And it’s not because I’ve gone as a religious professional but simply as a person publicly identified with God that people have been helped.
It’s incredible, really, that God uses pastors in such ways. But it’s an unequaled reality of ministry.
Bird’s Eye View of God’s Grace
Finally, pastors, because of their particular role of overseeing the church, have the privilege of seeing God work time and again in the lives of people. Because we’re involved in so many people’s lives, we get to see not only their struggles but also the resulting victories and spiritual growth. It’s not unlike a parent’s perspective, seeing what God does in the lives of your children.
Not long ago, a young man met with me to discuss a new direction he and his family were exploring. As we talked, I was reminded where this man was spiritually a few years earlier, and again I was astounded at God’s goodness.
He grew up attending church. His father died when he was a boy, and his mother, a godly woman, raised him alone. During the late 1960s, this young man rebelled against his mother and became a hippie, eventually living with a number of different girlfriends over the years.
The last girlfriend he lived with became pregnant. She was a woman he deeply loved, but still he was angry. He asked her to arrange an abortion. But then they both began to wonder if they wanted that.
As he thought about it. God began to work in his life. One Sunday he showed up at the church I was serving, and during the service God prompted him to redirect his life.
Shortly thereafter, he proposed to his girlfriend and married her, and they both started attending church. Eventually they both committed their lives to Christ and joined the church. After their daughter was born, I performed the dedication.
Four years later, I noticed this little girl during our church Christmas program, standing up front singing. I couldn’t keep the tears back as I realized she was here only through God’s gracious intervention.
Every Christian gets to enjoy watching God work in people. But in a pastor’s life, that experience is multiplied by tens and twenties. It’s just another example of the unique privileges we have in ministry.
Copyright © 1991 by Christianity Today
