Insights Gained Through My Own Journey: Phase I -- A Trinitarian Encounter

As I reflect on my own spiritual journey, both personally and professionally, I begin to discern a number of legs or phases in my journey in which my faith, perspectives on ministry, and who I am as a person growing to fullness in Christ. So far my journey has three key phases related to my ministry journey and I sense I am on the cusp of entering into my fourth phase which is engaging me in a process such as this where I am giving voice to a different way to understand the ministry to which we as shepherds have been called.

Though all journeying involves formation, the first phase of my journey involves the beginnings of my being formed for ministry by encountering God's Trinitarian character.

Though I was raised in a conservative Baptist setting I did not have a transforming encounter with Christ until I was at the end of trying to be a good Christian. It was at the point that I came to discover that there was nothing I could do to gain God's favor that I first experienced Christ Jesus taking a hold of me, embracing me, accepting me and bringing me into relationship with himself. It was through this experience, and it was an experience that completely changed the direction of my life as I yielded my life to Christ's lordship, that I embarked on an intentional journey alongside of Christ.

Up to this point my Christian experience would have been best described by my trying to keep up with Christ -- every time I would fall on my face, in my looking up from the dust I would see Christ walking over the ridge of the next hill and I would need to try to run to catch up just to make my way with him -- it was a tiring journey. Once Christ embraced me and I rested in that embrace, when I fell down and looked up, Christ was there extending his hand to me, helping me to stand up so that we could walk together. This image has become a key metaphor for not only my spiritual journey, but for understanding the pastoral role.

Over the next ten years my journey with Christ engaged me in a Trinitarian encounter with God. At the beginning of my intentional journeying with Christ my life was opened to experiencing God in the person of the Holy Spirit. As I began worshiping with a charismatic community meeting in an Anglican church in Canada, I began to be embraced by the manifest presence of the Spirit within this community and became radically aware of the present working of the Spirit continuing the ministry of Christ on earth. Through these days and my college days, I discovered the presence of God's Spirit taking hold of me, forming me, shaping me, in order to be the person God has called me to be in the service of his mission on earth. It was during this time that I sensed God calling me to pastoral ministry.

In preparing for this calling I entered Fuller Theological Seminary in 1979 where in my first year I had a fresh encounter with Jesus Christ in a radically different way which reshaped the way I live out my life in the world. Up to this point I acknowledged and worship Jesus Christ as Lord in my life, but my devotion to him was not integral to guiding every aspect of my life. During my second or third quarter in seminary I was struggling with questions I did not have answers to. I was raised to believe that engaged Christians had a biblical response for every query, that our faith was carefully thought out to address the relevant issues. However as I encountered questions I did not have answers for my faith began to be shaken. It was at this time I encountered Jack Rodgers who provided a perspective that shifted my understanding of my faith as to where the foundation of my faith lay. He stated that as finite human beings there is always going to be someone smarter than us who will be able to shake us with a question which we are unable to answer or even have adequate categories for considering. Rather than the only response being to question our faith, we need to recognize that the faith system we have constructed is faulty and not where we are to place our trust. Rather the only place to put our trust is in the person of Jesus Christ. It is he who is the basis of our faith, not our faith systems. We are to put our trust in him, not in what we have been able to systematize through our belief. What I discovered in placing my faith, my trust in Christ alone for all of my life, was that I was able to begin asking and exploring questions I did not have the answers for. The reason this was liberating is because such questions caused me to dialogue more intensely with Christ the Lord and foundation of my life. I knew that in him all things hold together (Col. 1: 17) and so in him I have the freedom to explore those things that used to threaten my faith. This liberation enabled me to not be afraid to engage all of life and to explore all of life, not by myself, but in my relationship with Christ. In this Christological leg of my journey, Jesus was beginning to give me eyes to see life--its brokenness, as well as his activity of grace, hope and peace, through his eyes, his actions, as he embraced his Father's mission for restoring all humanity and all creation--missio Dei.

My encounter with the fatherhood of God became a part of my experience when I was pastoring in a United Methodist Church in Indiana. As I struggled with the debate that was being carried on at that time concerning inclusive language, not only in terms of male and female, but also how we talk about God--whether as he, she, or ?--I picked up Thomas Smail's short book entitled The Forgotten Father. As I read Smail's insights I began to see how the Father's love for humanity, for his creation prompted his mission here on earth. It became clear to me that Christ's own ministry was not his own, but that of his Father's as the gospel of John reveals so clearly when Jesus on numerous occasions expresses that he speaks what he hears his Father speaking and does what he sees his Father doing (cf. John 5:19-20, 7:16-17, 12:49-50, 14:24, etc). I came to realize that in our walking with Christ Jesus we are called to continue the ministry which he began in partnership with God the Father in bringing about his missional purpose, his telos. This opening of my eyes to the Fatherhood of God changed the way I viewed and engaged in ministry, for no longer was the ministry I was called to my ministry, but my obedience to partnering with Christ in serving the Father in accomplishing his purposes for the restoration of humanity and creation.

As I stated this first phase was the beginning of my ongoing encounter with the Trinitarian character of God, who has continued to take hold of me and shape me in being the person he is calling me to be as a member of Christ's community. Continually my openness to the presence of God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit shapes not only how I am growing as a person, but shapes how I understand and live out the nature of my calling through pastoral ministry.

The next posting will reflect on my second phase which focuses more directly on ministry.

Resources for Pastoral Ministry -- The Writings of Eugene H. Peterson

There are myriads of resources -- books, websites, conferences, seminars, educational programs -- designed to help pastors to become more effective leaders in their ministry contexts. However, selecting those resources which will enable you to be the kind of pastoral shepherd you were called to be requires some discernment. The majority of the literature on pastoral ministry focuses on leadership insights drawn from business, government, or military perspectives, and though insights can be gained for the ministry of shepherding, they more designed for the pastor to take on a "take-charge" role, rather than shepherding a community to live Christianly within their context.

This site will regularly feature different authors, organizations, and resources which are based on a different paradigm for pastoral ministry rather than ones that draw mainly from the business world.

One author I have found to be helpful at a foundational level is Eugene H. Peterson. His writings, particularly his four book series on the pastoral vocation, Five Smooth Stones for Pastoral Ministry, Working the Angles, The Contemplative Pastor, and Under the Unpredictable Plant, provide a solid theological and pastoral understanding of the shepherding role of the pastor within a congregation.

He relates that the primary action of the pastoral shepherd within the congregation is not to "run the church" -- reminiscent of business models, but to so walk with a community of people in order to guide them to attend to God through prayer, Scripture reading and spiritual direction. Such pastoral action requires pastors to first and foremost to be amongst the community they have been called to serve, to come alongside them in every aspect of life. His insights, drawn from his years of experience and reflection within pastoral ministry are invaluable.

Though there is room for leadership, it is an understanding of leadership that is radically different from the way pastoral leadership is described in most of the literature. Where much of the literature on leadership relates the pastoral role in task-oriented terms, Peterson places the emphasis on pastoral leadership as being primarily people-oriented. This kind of pastoring, I believe, is more apt to engage a community of faith in discovering the presence and power of the Spirit of God in their midst. This kind of pastoring recognizes clearly that Jesus Christ is the head of the church, that he is building his church and that his ministry is not focused through one individual or a leadership team, but through the whole body. The pastoral role is one of helping people see and live in obedience to what God is doing in the midst of the community.

I have just scratched the surface on insights to be gained from Peterson's writings. So, in further posts I will reflect on insights that arise from his writing, but for the time being I recommend to you his writings as a beginning point for thinking differently about pastoral ministry so that you can begin to pastor differently.

Purpose and Focus of the Center for Pastoral Ministry

Over the years with my serving both as a pastor in four congregations and serving pastors in their continuing education I have seen ways in which pastoring has taken a backseat to more business-oriented ways of leading in the church. As a result what has developed under the leadership of these CEO-type pastors are churches which are more "businesses in church clothes," rather than communities of faith which provide space for gospel in a broken world.

I am becoming increasingly aware, as I talk with pastors who are struggling with the kind of pastors they have become, the kind of pastors they have been pressured into, by the business-oriented approach to ministry, that there is a tremendous need to rediscover and rediscern what it means to be a pastoral shepherd, a pastoral servant.

In looking to Jesus as the paradigm for our pastoring, there is a strong focus not on "lording it over others," but in coming alongside others, being with others, being among others as a shepherd, as a servant in order to guide people in being open to see what God is doing all around them, in being open to hear what God is saying to them and to a broken world.

I believe deeply that in our rediscovering and rediscerning what it means to be shepherds, what it means to be servants, we shall come to understand more clearly and deeply what we are being called to in serving the church of Christ -- much more than embracing the concepts of leadership has.

So why this Center? Well I am discovering I am not the only pastor thinking this way. As I have interacted with pastors in different denominational and geographical settings I have witnessed a cry that there has to be more to what it means to be a shepherd of God's flock than than which is being expressed in the leadership literature ad nauseaum. We have been so inundated with leadership literature that we have forgotten the art of walking with a community of people guiding them to be connected with God. So this Center, which is starting out as a blog, is meant to be (1) a forum for connecting pastors in conversation with one another, (2) providing dialogue and learning opportunities for exploring together how we can be more effective shepherds and servants, (3) provide a resource listing for guiding our thinking and acting in new ways as pastoral shepherds and servants, and (4) to provide encouragement for one another as we seek to fulfill the calling God has placed upon our lives as pastors.

I hope you will join me on this journey -- a spiritual one, a theological one -- in which we can engage in mutual dialogue discovering together what we as pastors have been called to in serving Jesus Christ and his church.