A good friend asked me to define what it means to be a pastor. He asked me to email him my thoughts. I thought that this would be a good place for those thoughts, too. So here you go. I asked him the question at the end about what he thinks; the same goes for you all too.
That’s a great question bro. I find myself asking that question a bunch these days. I think that question is really a huge question because of how many types of pastors are out there. There are pators of mega churchs who opperate more like CEOs. There are pastors of small, rural churches who act as the town “father.” Then there are TV pastors who preach to an unknown audience, and traveling preachers whose message is the same message to each church on the circuit. I suppose there are some common denominators that can be found throughout all of these kinds of preachers. But I guess I should answer this from my perspective since that’s the only one I really know for sure.
For a while I would avoid the word pastor, in fact when people would introduce me as “their pastor” I would cringe a little. What’s strange about that is that for a long time that’s what I knew that I was supposed to do, but in my mind a pastor was a person standing in front of a congregation each week. I certainly don’t fall into that direct mold. I felt like I should qualify that statement by saying, “well, it’s a small church.” or something like that. As if my ability as a pastor was a direct reflection of the size of the congregation. I think that other things that made me feel awkward is that I would become self-conscious about my pastoral personality. I’m certainly not the stereotypical pastor. I don’t fit that mold too well. I think that is one of Lauren’s favorite thing about me because when she meets new people she always seems to mention that I used to have a mohawk and that I have a beard. I wonder if people hear that I’m a pastor that they’ll question what type of church I pastor. I realize that all of these things are just ways for me to critique myself as a pastor based on personal bias and often have little to do with my actual ability. I realize that you asked about what it means to be a pastor.
I’ve actually been thinking about this question a lot lately. Here’s some thoughts that I’ve been working on. I think the greatest model of a pastor that the Bible shows us is Jesus. This might seem obvious because we should all be striving to live like him, however I think it’s more helpful to look at his life more than Paul, who is obviously seen as a “pastor.” The biggest reason is because Paul traveled from church to church. I’m not against this type of pastoral care, but it’s just not that similar to how my role as a pastor really is. I find myself more like Jesus because I’m walking through life with a small group of people. In the same way I’ve started to look at the “Good Shepherd” passages to find out the characteristics of the Father that I should be imitating. Look through John 10 as a start to understanding the shepherd/pastor role. A shepherd/pastor is a leader. He leads because of a close relationship. The sheep listen to his voice because they know his voice. I’m learning that for me to be a good pastor I have to know what’s going on in the individual lives of the church. I need to be involved in their lives. It hard to offer counsel to someone who I don’t really know. I can tell them generic things, but it’s hard to be really specific when I don’t really know what’s going on. The other part of this is that hey need to know me, too. I need to be around them and with them. That’s a huge part of the trust. Walking side-by-side with them through difficult and joyous times will show them that you care about them.
The next part in John is a little tough to translate into my role as a pastor. Maybe I just need to think about it more. I suppose we could understand it to remind us that we are called to act in a way that takes people to the Father. They wont find salvation through our works directly, but we should be living in a way that lines up with the gospel. We should be living our the message of the gospel clear enough for our congregations to see the way to Life. After that, Jesus tells us that pastors will fight for their sheep. In fact, they will lay down their lives for their sheep. This is pretty important. This ties in with the trust aspect on knowing the shepherds voice. Pastors should be willing to make sacrifices for their congregation. They should place their flocks life above their own. This part can get a bit tricky because I don’t think that it means that we become slaves to the church. This doesn’t mean that we need to answer every phone call, or email someone back ASAP, or even stop whatever we are doing to meet with someone. As we get to know our flock we start to understand whether or not it’s a sheep crying wolf, again, or if it is someone in serious need. This is something that I need to be reminded of. I am to care for the flock, not be slaves to them. We are protectors of our flock. We protect them against the enemy. We fight for them.
This last part in John 10 might be the most exciting part. We will have a flock that knows us and we know them, but their will be others outside of our flock that we will shepherd, too. I think that we can get so focused on our congregations that we can miss opportunities to care for people outside of our congregations. This could be someone who doesn’t want to step into church, but has questions. I might be someone from another church. How ever it is that we come in contact with these people, we need to care for them as if they were part of our own flock–but that doesn’t mean that they need to be a part of our flock. “They too will listen to my voice…” This should be seen as a challenge to pastors to be involved with the community around them. Be seen by more than just the church.
Wow. I didn’t intend to head off in this direction. I thought about just copying and pasting something from dictionary.com and making some comment about how easy it is. Instead I started preaching. Sorry. Tell me about what your working through. It’s your turn. What do you think a pastor is?
peace
