“Pastor”: Drop the Caricature (by John Frye)

“Pastor”: Drop the Caricature (by John Frye) February 13, 2015

Screen Shot 2015-01-07 at 3.35.58 PMBecause of the drift away from Jesus the Pastor (Shepherd), the pastoral landscape is awash with convoluted definitions of pastoral work squeezed into an American cultural mold. I desire to be a voice for and champion of the local church pastor with the understanding that Jesus is the Supreme Example of and Empowering Reality for defining the pastor.

The four Gospels are pastoral manuals written to deal with pastoral issues in the early church. Sometimes, we forget this. There is an ocean depth of pastoral knowledge in the Gospels, yet in a brief sketch, Matthew presents Jesus as a teaching pastor, a new Moses with a kingdom-of-God definition of local church life.

Mark presents an activist pastor not shrinking back from the “principalities and powers” (cosmic and structural) that threaten human life.

Luke presents the Spirit-empowered pastor engaging people in all levels of society as those deeply loved and sought out by God.

John presents the Good Pastor (John 10) whose intimate knowledge of and self-sacrifice for God’s people set a working agenda for pastors. This isn’t rocket science.

I think the most troubling caricature of pastoral work is that it is ingrown. Pastors care about the fold, the flock. Pastors drift toward being inward. Pastors apparently get so busy maintaining the community that they lose passion for expanding the community. I admit, this may be true in many cases, but don’t blame the biblical concept “pastor” for it. Many pastors seem to have a motivation to hide among the sheep and avoid the messiness of the “real world.” Using local church ministry as a hiding place needs to be named for what it is: cowardice. None of this is traceable, however, to Jesus the Good, Great, and Chief Pastor.

Let’s be honest. I think the evangelical tendency to obsess over the Apostle Paul and his letters for local church life has created this visionless, pastoral inwardness. Pauline-obsessed pastors may demonstrate this “I’m-in-my-study-don’t bother me” ivory tower view of the pastor more than anything you will find in the life and ministry of Jesus. Shepherds, pastors worth their salt, leave the flock, weather the storms, fend off the dangers, even laying own their lives if necessary. Pastors are, in essence, risk-takers. If they are not, then they are not like their Chief Pastor, Jesus. Please hear me. I am not trying to exalt the pastor over the other gifted people in leadership and laity in the church. Pastors deeply long for an activist congregation and eagerly help people discover, develop, and deploy their particular gifts, abilities, and passions for the sake of the mission of God. Pastoring is not just a gift; it is a vocation. Not everyone likes to hear this in the church these days.

Philip L. Culbertson and Arthur Bradford Shippee, eds., The Pastor: Readings from the Patristic Period present segments of the writings of the earliest local church leaders. The terms for the pastors might be different—bishops, presbyters, deacons—but the issues are just the same as current local church life. Culbertson and Shippee write, “How well we recognize ourselves in the pastoral literature of the early church” (12).

In the accidents of history, the term “pastor” became the working title of local church clergy. There was no vast conspiracy to have the term “dominate” and/or marginalize other gifted leaders. Pastors, like, Jesus the Pastor, simply cared for the day to day life of those who became God’s people. They still do.


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