{"id":1807,"date":"2025-05-15T22:16:09","date_gmt":"2025-05-15T22:16:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/2025\/05\/15\/why-choose-the-path-of-the-pastor\/"},"modified":"2025-05-15T22:16:09","modified_gmt":"2025-05-15T22:16:09","slug":"why-choose-the-path-of-the-pastor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/content\/why-choose-the-path-of-the-pastor\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Choose the Path of the Pastor?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Who would want to be a pastor these days? We see publicized pastoral malpractice and abuse, religious decline, growing demands upon clergy, and vitriolic division all around us. Studies show increasing pressures on ordained ministers related to burnout<\/a>, congregational criticism<\/a>, social isolation, financial <\/a>strain, diminishing respect for church ministry<\/a>, overall low vocational satisfaction<\/a>, and increased risk of anxiety and depression<\/a>. With these challenges, many clergy feel disillusioned<\/a> and desire a change<\/a> in vocation. While some religious groups still hold ordination in high regard, it seems that for many in secularizing western societies, pastoral and parish ministry retains less of the appeal it once offered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I live in St. Andrews, a coastal village filled with young, aspiring, cosmopolitan students for nine months each year. They come to study at Scotland\u2019s oldest university. In recent years, our church noticed a surprising trend. In the past, we made a point to teach that ordained ministry is no more valuable than other vocations. Following Luther\u2019s example, we proclaimed that God is every bit as much at work in the vocation of the milkmaid\u2014or investment banker\u2014as through ordained clergy. I still believe this, but we made a pastoral miscalculation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prior, pietistic generations needed to hear that all of life, even the portions that seem \u201csecular,\u201d is a theater wherein the glory of God is displayed. But the ambitious young people I meet now are all too aware. Those keen on influence enter into politics. Those passionate about activism enter the nonprofit sector. Those aiming to transform lives enter therapeutic practice. Those who want a clear connection between their faith and work pursue medicine. Year after year, very few graduates from our privileged context pursue ordained ministry. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Upon reflection, this isn\u2019t surprising. Among all the reasons we have noted for the decline in respect and appeal of pastoral ministry, we might add one more: We have forgotten what pastoral ministry actually is. Yes, we have seen people with titles such as minister, vicar, priest, or reverend performing pastoral and liturgical functions, but many of us have lost a sense of what a minister uniquely does in distinction from others. We might have firmer views regarding what ministers should not<\/em> do. Common statements include: Ministers aren\u2019t trained counselors or therapists. They aren\u2019t academics who should lecture regarding scholarly consensus. They should not fancy themselves political policy experts. And if they do speak on matters of public life, they must do so in a manner that confirms rather than challenges our political views.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Given all we expect a minister not to do, what is a pastor uniquely\u2014or essentially\u2014qualified to do? What separates a minister from a biblical scholar, therapist, spiritual director, or any other Christian called to a life that witnesses to God?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A pastor is ordained to the ministry of Word and sacrament. This somewhat antiquated and potentially confusing phrase cannot be avoided if we want to explain the spiritual\u2014and therefore theological\u2014essence of ordained ministry. Ministry shouldn\u2019t be defined pragmatically, as if a pastor were merely a hyperproductive Christian, missional entrepreneur, purveyor of social care, or motivational speaker. Yet a minister\u2019s role isn\u2019t limited only to presiding at the Lord\u2019s Table or preaching sermons. Being ordained to the ministry of Word and sacrament means serving as a guardian of the church\u2019s very existence. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For traditions descending from the Reformation, the church is a creature of the Word. As Karl Barth says, it\u2019s the \u201ccrater\u201d<\/a> formed by the explosive arrival of God\u2019s grace in Jesus. The church consists of those who, touched by God\u2019s gracious acts in Christ and the Spirit, live as redeemed pilgrims and witnesses to a coming city where all things are made new (Rev. 21:5). That\u2019s what the church is: God\u2019s sign set in the midst of this \u201csad world,\u201d as the Heidelberg Catechism<\/a> says, that \u201ceverything sad might come untrue,\u201d as Samwise Gamgee says<\/a>. A line of persons, stretching back to the apostles, have been set apart by God\u2014or \u201ccalled\u201d\u2014to safeguard this grace which is the church\u2019s lifeblood. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

These guardians are not lords but servants, lovingly keeping the church true to her task of being a place where the grace of God is offered and received in a broken world. This is the heart of the ministry of Word and sacrament, because Word and sacrament are where God graciously gives himself to a needy world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are few better exemplifications of the unique essence of pastoral ministry than the end of Marilynne Robinson\u2019s Gilead<\/em>. The prodigal, Jack Boughton, is leaving town as his father is dying. No one among Jack\u2019s family or friends can comprehend this insensitive act of abandonment, except his father\u2019s friend and fellow minister, Ames. Why can Ames, who throughout the story disapproves of Jack the most, possess this capacity for empathy? Jack and his father cannot seem to understand one another despite their best efforts. Yet Ames, at the end, understands that Jack\u2019s puzzling departure is not an act of moral insanity but of duty to a new family of his own, shrouded in scandal and secrecy. Ames also possesses insight into the heart of Jack\u2019s father. He perhaps alone understands that if Jack\u2019s dying father could, he\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

would abandon all those handsome children of his, mild and confident as they are, and follow after that one son whom he has never known, whom he has favored as one does a wound, and he would protect him as a father cannot, defend him with a strength he does not have, sustain him with a bounty beyond any resource he could ever dream of having. If Boughton could be himself, he would utterly pardon every transgression, past, present and to come.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

How does Ames know all this? Not because of an abundance of virtue, but because Ames doesn\u2019t just know about <\/em>the people in this family conflict\u2014he truly knows them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The minister John Ames, for all his faults, is called to something a therapist is not just discouraged but forbidden to do. He must perform a duty no doctor or social worker is allowed to do according to the rules of their profession, though countless films invariably show them doing precisely this. A pastor must be willing to say with the apostles: \u201cWe were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well\u201d (1 Thess. 2:8). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If ministers of Word and sacrament have a unique call to keep the church faithful to the divine grace which is its very essence, then part of the minister\u2019s calling is to keep the Father\u2019s heart for prodigals central to church life. Yet the tools ministers employ in this task do not allow them to serve from a distance, as if they were only shepherds and not also among the sheep under the care of the One who is \u201cthe great Shepherd\u201d (Heb. 13:20). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Living among people and having the courage and discernment to insist\u2014sometimes to the point of offense\u2014that Christ\u2019s grace remains central over-and-against all the subtle ways we displace it requires opening one\u2019s home, heart, and very life to others. Only by sharing one\u2019s very self can a minister, like Ames, truly \u201cunderstand\u201d one\u2019s fellows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It has always been this way. Pastoral ministry involves many days when nearly anything else sounds better than what Eugene H. Peterson calls \u201clong obedience in the same direction.\u201d<\/a> Yet pastors must keep going, hoping they might be an Ambrose to some young Augustine.<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Augustine, on his torturous pilgrimage to faith says that he \u201cwas led to him by you, unaware that through him, in full awareness, I might be led to you.\u201d<\/a> What made the bishop Ambrose an essential way station on Augustine\u2019s restless passage to faith? It was not his rhetorical finesse or academic rigor. No, as Augustine says: \u201cI began to like him, at first indeed not as a teacher of the truth, for I had absolutely no confidence in your Church, but as a human being who was kind to me<\/a>.\u201d Ambrose shared himself with Augustine, which made what he preached worth attending to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is what ministers offer: The grace of God distilled through the \u201ccrooked timber\u201d<\/a> of our all-too-human lives. Only when we have shared our very selves is there any plausibility to our sharing of Word and sacrament.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the end of Gilead<\/em>, Ames meets Jack on his sad journey out of town to his secret family, seemingly abandoning his dying father. In a moment of inexplicable, uncharacteristic honesty, Jack takes up the role of parishioner to pastor. He does something our hearts long to do with a minister, even in a secular age: Jack confesses. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He confesses that despite all his legitimate justifications and rationalizations, he cannot help feeling, \u201cI\u2019m doing the worst possible thing again.\u201d Ames does the one thing only a pastor can do in response to such a confession. He offers this prodigal God\u2019s blessing. Jack takes off his hat, falls to a knee in the street, and as Ames places his hand on Jack\u2019s head, he \u201cdid bless him to the limit of [his] powers,\u201d pronouncing the Aaronic blessing: \u201cThe Lord bless thee and keep thee.\u201d Ames concludes: \u201cI\u2019d have gone through seminary and ordination and all the years intervening for that one moment \u2026 This is why we have lived this life!\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While I suspect most ministers sometimes wish they could do something else, I cannot deny that when my eyes fall upon an old saint, whose loss and heartache I know too well, and those familiar words roll off my tongue\u2014\u201dthe body of Christ given for you\u201d\u2014I cannot help but feel, at least for a moment: \u201cThis is why I have lived this life.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jared Michelson is a Presbyterian minister and a research fellow in the divinity school at the University of St Andrews (Scotland).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Who would want to be a pastor these days? We see publicized pastoral malpractice and abuse, religious decline, growing demands upon clergy, and vitriolic division all around us. Studies show increasing pressures on ordained ministers related to burnout, congregational criticism, social isolation, financial strain, diminishing respect for church ministry, overall low vocational satisfaction, and increased Read more…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":179,"featured_media":1808,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"tax_ctp_authors":[1841],"tax_ctp_books":[],"tax_ctp_categories":[154],"tax_ctp_field_guide_subcategory":[],"tax_ctp_field_guides":[],"tax_ctp_format":[131],"tax_ctp_multimedia":[],"tax_ctp_point_editor":[429],"tax_publications":[140],"tax_ctp_tags":[3538,4604,4606],"tax_ctp_topics":[],"class_list":["post-1807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tax_ctp_authors-jared-michelson","tax_publications-ct-pastors","tax_ctp_tags-calling","tax_ctp_tags-pastor","tax_ctp_tags-pastors-role"],"acf":{"scripture_references":null},"yoast_head":"\nWhy Choose the Path of the Pastor? - CT Pastors<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Despite fewer pursuing pastoral roles today, the 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