To Be A Pastor

I've been reading Eugene Peterson,  which makes me wonder how I got so old without reading Peterson's books before.  His writing is wise, spiritual, literate, and very, very human. Pastors are the subject of most of his work, and he draws from a wealth of experience after decades in the pastorate. I highly recommend him

One thing that struck me this morning as I read one of his books was his description of his boyhood in Montana. He describes the people he met there in his town as being eccentric, delightful and real characters--with few exceptions.  One exception, he confesses, were the ministers he knew.  For the most part, they were phonies, mostly interested in hunting and fishing, who could not wait to get away from their  churches to hit the woods and streams.  It wasn't that they were bad men, just not spiritual men.  They wanted what everyone else did--comfortable,  uncomplicated careers followed by long, smooth retirements.  It never occurred to them that their true calling might be at odds with their comfort. 

I know those men.  In fact, I've been one of them.  That's the problem with those of us who claim to stand in for God--our words may be lofty, but our true thoughts go no higher than our stomachs and no wider than our investments.  It never occurs to us that we are supposed  sacrifice our lives for the sheep.   We keep thinking we are supposed to be rewarded for every little favor we give them.  We live as if our calling to word and sacrament were a commodity to be sold rather than a sacrificial gift. 

The spiritual world is far from us.  We get all tied up in problems and pleasures. The spiritual world is not our reality--it is a ghost which we sometimes glance out of the corner of our eye.  

We seek God, but we do not desire Him. We seek him the way a drunken beggar seeking a rich traveler on the street, to give us what we desire sow we can spend it upon our own version of happiness.  We pursue God for the sake of something else.

Lately, I feel as if I've returned to my pursuit of God.  My heart has not been empty, as the saints say, nor have I heard him as the Hound of Heaven, following my footsteps. He may have very well that He has been following, but I have not heard him.  My television, radio,  and cell phone drown out the footsteps of the Almighty in pursuit.  My heart has not been empty, either, since it has been too crowded with trivialities to notice.   I have been like those preachers Peterson knew in his boyhood--stately,  eloquent, and shallow. 

So I have returned to my pursuit of God, to see His face and know His ways. My pursuit is different than I was in my youth. I pursued Him then, thinking I was going to change the world or save the globe.  I imagined myself, as the disciples often did,  on some lofty throne,  doing great things for God's kingdom.   Now I seek Him  for the sheer beauty of it.  I'm not going to win the world for Jesus, but that doesn't matter.  Now, I pursue Him so I can see the world with Jesus.  The more I see him, the more I admire His handiwork,  both in nature and in His children. 

Being a pastor is I want to do, purely for the love of Him, and His sheep.  To be a pastor is to stand on the edge of wonder.  It is a privilege God has given to a few to walk towards Him with crooked staff in hand through green pastures , still waters, and valleys full of danger,  leading his sheep to Him, with them  sometimes bleating and complaining.  but with them all the way, then one by one, I follow him, close enough to see their eyes shine as they catch a glimpse of Glory.

Sheep Feeding

I came across a quote from C S Lewis' book Letters to Malcolm in Richard Foster's book on prayer  "Jesus told Peter,  'feed my sheep,' not 'try experiments on my lab rats.'"

How true!  Pastors often forget what a pastor is. Basically, we are keepers of the sheep. 

We are called to feed them, care for them,  help them.  We are not called upon to drive them like a team of horses,  or experiment on them like guinea pigs, or to use them as fertilizer by a leader to grow a church.  We are called to care for the sheep God has given us.

Pastors frequently come down with the disease of "holy ambition."  I say "holy" because that is how Christians leader typically excuse their own ambition.  If we want a bigger church,  we can justify it as winning the lost.  If we want a big career with lots of followers, we can justify it as utilizing our gifts.  If we want to remake the church as images of our own egocentric vision, we are just fulfilling our call.  It's easy for us assume that the people we serve exist for the purpose of serving our purposes and not theirs.

But Jesus didn't call us to feed sheep.  To me, that means two things.

First we are called to acknowledge that the people we serve in our churches are  our flock, and not our servants.

Suppose you had a dog, but you decided you wanted cat.  You could staple whiskers on him, stick him in a tree, and teach him to say "meow"  it would not be a cat. It is by nature a dog. 

No amount of training will make lambs into lions.  Only God can do that.

Sheep do not have a purpose in life beyond being sheep. They will give their wool, but they are not treated like cattle or hunting dogs.  Most of all to be left alone in green pastures and still waters.

But what about the Great Commission (some will say)?  Jesus called us to go into the world and make disciples--that is, sheep of Jesus.  The Great Commission is not a call to build our own kingdoms, but to introduce people to the true, good Shepherd.  Church leaders will seldom lay down their lives for the sheep, but often leave the flock at the first hint that things may not go their way.  But the Good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep, whether or not they do what He says.  He doesn't leave because some bigger flock is calling. 

Second, our job is to feed them that means to preach, teach, minister, and visit for their benefit, not for the benefit of others.

If we want to know what sheep need, look in the Bible.    In  Psalm 23, one of God's sheep lets us know what the Good Shepherd ought to do.

• I shall not want--The shepherd has my needs and wants in mind.  I have security,  knowing that the shepherd is doing his best to provide my needs and wants.

• He leads me in green pastures and still waters--the food he gives is pleasant and easily accessible. I don't have to work hard to get it.  He lays it out clearly and easily.
• He leads me in righteousness--He keeps me from straying the wrong way.  He doesn't let me go to far up the mountain, so I  lose my fooding, nor does he let me stray into the valley, where I can be devoured, but he keeps me on the straight an d narrow.  Step by step, he shows me the right path through life.
• He keeps me from fear--when I am in scary places in life,  He walks with me.  He doesn't take the danger from me, but he defends me and comforts me when I am in danger.
• He assists in my healing.  Anointing oil is medicine. Is presence is medicine to me,  and comforts me in trouble. 

• He uses his rod and staff.  He's not always gentle, but if I need it, he can give me a lashing.  More often, though he draws me back from danger, not drives me away.

• He stands with me in danger.  He recognizes that I live in a dangerous world, but he teaches me not to be afraid.  Instead, gives me valuable advice to sustain me in the rough patches of life.
• He takes me to my final destination. Nothing about the journey matters if I wind up in the wrong place.  Thanks to the Shepherd, I am going to make it home safely.  That’s what shepherds are for.

Feed God's sheep. Don't drive them, don't beat them, don't use them. Let God take care of them, they way He takes care of you. 

What;s Right With the Church, What's Wrong With It, and How to Fix it

The other night, I attended a banquet where the featured speaker was a well known local radio personality,  who is on a one-man crusade against the organized church.  Although a committed Christian,  he has been so burned by the organized church that he rails against it on a regular, weekly basis. 

After the banquet we fell into a long conversation.  To my surprise I found myself agreeing with most  of what he had to say.  Although my experiences have been slightly more positive than his,  much of what he says is true.  Christ's church has ceased to be an organism and has become an organization,  with all the political and material demands of being an organization.  The church as it exists on earth has to deal with money,  power,  and appearances, which means it is continually falling into corruption, greed, and power politics.  It has become for many a bureaucracy of the soul,  a Department of Motor Vehicles with better music.

If you are reading this and saying "Yes, that is true for the church down the street, but not mine." Think it over.  Who says that a small church cannot be just as impersonal and  vain as a big one, or that a church which flees the trappings of traditional spirituality cannot get caught up in the same machinations that sapped the life out of the medieval church? Do we really think Presbyterians or Baptists are so pure of heart that they cannot forget why they rebelled against the Catholics in the first place, and become like them in Spirit if not in appearance?  American churches often remind me of soccer clubs in other countries,  voluntary organizations which seem to exist to compete against other organizations for bragging rights to the city.  For the truly lost and truly hurting, the church is often just one more building on the street, between the bar and the Walmart.

But for all its faults, the church has got a lot of things right, and we need to acknowledge it.  

First of all it has God on its side.  The church is still the only organization dedicated to getting out God's Word and leading people into a relationship to Him.  Can you think of another organization capable of leading people to a better life?   I can't.  Winston Churchill once said that democracy was a very bad form of government, but that all the others are so much worse.  The same can be said of the church.  Education,  entertainment,  publishing, mass media and all the other institutions that form modern society are infinitely worse, and every bit as hypocritical.   How does  government (for example) have the gall to say "we're here to help you," when everyone knows they are here to buy votes, so our elected officials can have great influence and get fat pensions.  Or how does the news  media--any news media-- have the nerve to say they are here just to report the news objectively? 

No, all of human society is corrupt, to one degree or another.  Where there is the potential for corruption, corrupt people will go. But that is a long way from saying that churches are only here to be corrupt.   A horse has a purpose and it has flies, but it does not exist for the flies.  Churches are sinful and corrupt as well, but they do not exist for that purpose alone.  When we scrape away the dirt of the world,   underneath there are still congregations of ordinary people who love God and one another, read the Bible,  and do the best they can to live clean in a dirty world.  Like a dirty child, underneath that disheveled mess  is something  beautiful and worthy of praise,  which the world cannot fully drive way, and the gates of hell cannot prevail against.

But my friend is right.  The church is deeply flawed, mainly because if has forgotten it's initial purpose.  What went wrong with the church is that it forgets that we are not of this world, and  relies on worldly programs rather than heavenly realities.  We lose our focus on heaven and  look after earthly things. Then we become obsessed with keeping our institutions running.  We pay big money for things we do not need, in order to put  on an attractive and prosperous image.  Then we must maintain that image at all cost, and we lose our passion for God.  We are a real Body of Christ though--we just act phony.

Look at the architecture of a typical church.  They are designed to create the illusion of  transcendence--high ceilings,  high pulpits,  and stained glass windows that are intended to make us look holy and grand.  If a person  dressed with such grandiloquence, we would call them pompous.  Modern churches who deliberately avoid such "churchy" designs do the same thing with  lighting tricks,  video screens and smoke machines.  All this is intended to fool the eye, and make it seem as if God were there, whether He is or not.  When you think about it, it isn't much different from a witch doctor putting on a wicker mask and dancing around a village.  We pretend to a greater intimacy with God than we actually have.

Ultimately, there is no cure for the institutional church. Those who try, wind up recreating it in some other form somewhere else.  There is, however a cure for those who are inside it.

First, we  can stop being phonies.  Let us admit that we do not have all the answers, that we are still looking for God's will, struggling to live out our faith as best we can.  There is no point in condemning our leaders, just as there is no point in following them blindly.   Let's all just be honest and open to the Spirit.  We don't know all there is to know about God, but we can seek Him.

 Second, we can quit substituting programs, which do not work, for relationships.  Jesus taught his disciples to love the lost, not develop marketing strategies. 

Third, we can love one another.  Jesus told Peter to tend His sheep, not fleece them.  Let's care more about one another as people rather than what they can do for the church.  Then maybe we'll actually start looking and acting like Jesus' church.