Leadership for the Journey

Last night I had the opportunity to meet with a number of folk from My People, which is a ministry to the indigenous people of North America. In talking with Ray Aldred and Terry LeBlanc, not only about their ministry, but also their perspective on the God's Story, Scripture, the Christian journey, etc. it generated some insights on the way leadership is to be carried out through the pastoral role.

As the people of God we are a part of a story, in fact we are a part of a number of stories and what gives our lives meaning and direction is how these stories are connected and integrated. Each of us has our own story involving our family, our heritage, our life journey, but we are also a part of a greater story, as story that acts not only as a metanarrative and telos for our being Christian, being human, but also transforms our stories and enables us to see how our stories are caught up in the ultimate story -- God's Story.

Ray and I talked about Scripture as God's Story and that this Story is told and retold, not so much as a series of propositions, but as a Story of God engaging a people, a people of his choosing -- and so it is a Story that is told, heard, retold, reheard in community. The truth of this Story cannot be pulled apart and compartmentalized apart from the Story, but the truth of this Story is meant to impact and transform our lives as we submit the story of our lives to God's Story. Truth, God's truth is relative to his Story. The modern experiment, in which so many of us have become used to categorizing and compartmentalizing truth, has ripped truth out of its context, its God context. God's truth is meant to be heard, understood and lived out in story -- and the ultimate good news is that as we are embraced by God's Story (through our surrendering, submission to Christ Jesus and living in the presence and power of the Spirit) our stories are transformed and caught up in God's Story.

Terry and I talked about life as journey, rather than life as being only destination focused. Life is more than where we are headed, but it is living in God's Story throughout the days of our life -- hence a journey that is directed by God's Story and God's Vision (or eschatological telos). And the living out of this journey is not done alone, but in a community -- journey is walked with others.

The implications of all this for pastoral ministry and pastoral leadership are rich. Much of our modern conceptions of leadership have to do with destination and little to do with journey. But if we see life as journey and that our life journey is not only about our stories, but our being embraced and transformed in and through God's Story (in Jesus and in the power of the Spirit as we live our lives in light of the Father's mission--missio Dei), then pastoral leadership is to be exercised in a community experiencing God's Story and being transformed focusing on the journey, rather than just the destination. Now journeying with God is directed by God's telos, which gives purpose and direction to our journey, but it is primarily about our day to day living in this Story, than just where the destination is.

This means that pastoral leadership is less about being upfront, out ahead, trying to get people to follow so that we can get to the destination, but rather, pastoral leadership is being with, alongside, among the people of God we have been called to serve to guide them along their life journey as they grow more and more each day in seeing how their story is embraced by God's Story. In being with, alongside and among, pastors repeatedly help the members of their community see what God is doing and hear what God is saying to them as a people -- for them to see how God's Story is being unfolded in their midst right here and right now. In being with, alongside and among, it is not about planting some new vision into their lives, but helping them see, uncover, discover, discern the vision that the Spirit of God is manifesting in their presence as the body of Christ. The pastor does not need to "sell" any vision to get a congregation "to buy into it" --rather the pastor has the responsibility to articulate the commonness of the stories that are being lived in light of and in integral relation to God's Story in our midst. It as the pastor articulates the shape of God's Story in their midst, the people bear witness to what the Spirit has already been shaping in their lives. This is vision-casting in a new frame, this is pastoral leadership from a different perspective. It has all to do with God's Story, the community of God's people living in this Story, and it has to do with discerning how our stories -- our stories within the community story-- are embraced and integrated with God's Story.

This kind of pastoring helps people to attend to God in all of their life, helps people discover how God has been active in shaping their story, and leads to their participation in God's ongoing Story (as it continues to be lived out in the presence and power of the Holy Spirit--not that we are adding to the text of Scripture). This is pastoral ministry focused on a community in the midst of journey, rather than a community merely focused on the destination. It simply requires a different kind of leadership than we have been taught over the past 20-30 years.

Insights Gained Through My Own Journey: Phase 2 -- Reflection on Ministry

This is the second of three parts of insights gained through my own journey. The first phase focused on my journey as a Trinitarian encounter and was posted in December 2005. This second phase reflects on my coming to an understanding of the nature of ministry.

Though I began reflecting on the nature of ministry as early as 1984 through the writing of Ray Anderson, I was not deeply impacted by the inner logic of ministry until the late 1990s. In 1988 I began serving a congregation in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Over the next five years I would come to a deeper understanding that ministry is not just what pastors do and that the laity do not merely assist the pastor in his/her ministry. Rather the ministry of God invites all of God's people to participate in what God is doing on earth. As I sought to understand the ramifications of Ephesians 4: 11-16, and how pastors and others are called to equip the people of God for engagement in ministry, I began to recognize this vision as a key aspect of my calling.

I read the books, such as R. Paul Steven's Liberating the Laity, went to conferences on equipping God's people for ministry in order to become more effective in preparing and equipping members of the church I was serving to become more active in ministry -- and not just ministry in the church, but ministry in the Monday to Friday world. This last emphasis was a key one for me because what was becoming important for me was to see the people of God integrating their faith with their living -- that what they believed was carried out in actions that made space for the gospel in the midst of Monday to Friday. For me equipping God's people for ministry had more to do with getting out from behind the walls of the church and out into the world. Frank Tillapaugh's book, Unleashing the Church, became a significant book for me in modeling how a community of God's people discerns what God is doing in our communities and how we can discover how we are to engage in participating with what God is doing.

However, while I was coming to new understandings about ministry and the people of God, I was still practicing ministry in ways espoused by the church growth movement and the burgeoning mega-church movement (at least in the ways I was interpreting them). I still saw that the vision for ministry came through the pastor, that the church needed to be intentional in creating ministry opportunities (seeing the need and responding to it), that the people of God needed to be motivated, for them to discover their giftedness so that they could be placed into the proper ministry context. I became the kind of pastor, that I now realize I never wanted to become. For the sake of "ministry," I lost sight of God's people and my responsibility to shepherd them, seeing them as people who needed to be motivated, directed to be engaged in ministry. Though I did not intend malice, I was caught up in "manipulating" people to become involved in ministry -- and people began to misunderstand and were hurt. My response to their resistance was concluding that they lacked commitment, they lacked a desire to be involved in the things of God, their faith was not integrated with their living.

As a result I went on to do doctoral work in education to develop processes to bridge the gap between faith and practice -- and in the process I began to see how manipulative I was, how deeply I misunderstood the nature of ministry and the people of God's participation in it, my participation in it. It was in the years from 1993 to 2002 -- which I refer to as my 'desert years" that I came to think differently about ministry and became a very different kind of pastor. As I sat in the pews on Sunday during my Ph.D. years I began to wonder if I had come across to the people in the pews as the pastors I was listening to Sunday after Sunday were coming across. They were all about agenda, vision, mission, and it seemed the people were mere playing pieces to fit into these wonderful plans. I began to develop a different perspective sitting on the other side of the pulpit.

On the other side of the pulpit I began to see what kind of pastor I had become and I realized that I had neglected my calling as shepherd. I began reading Eugene Peterson, I began to reread Ray Anderson, I became acquainted with the folk at the Gospel and Our Culture Network, I reread Stanley Hauerwas, I read Stan Grenz -- and I began to realize that ministry is not our creation, vision is not what we have to sell to God's people for them to be involved. No, ministry is what God is doing and we are called to discern what God is doing and speaking in order to speak and do what God is already doing all around us -- to be like Jesus. He did not have a ministry of his own, but the Gospel of John is replete with passages where Jesus says that his ministry is not his own, but that he speaks what he hears from the Father and he does what he sees the Father doing. Similarly, the church of Jesus Christ does not have a ministry of its own -- it is not to be guided by utilitarian or pragmatic concerns, but rather it is to discern and participate with what God is doing in the world -- to discover his mission (missio Dei) and participate in it. This is what Tillapaugh was modeling. This is what Anderson has been describing for over 20 years. As Lesslie Newbiggin noted, we are not saved to be kept safe and comfortable, but we are called, elected in order to engage in the work of God, to participate with what God is already doing in our midst.

So what does this have to say regarding pastoring. Pastoring is not about setting the agenda for ministry. God has already set the agenda, Jesus had already revealed the agenda. Pastors are called to shepherd the people to attend to God (Eugene Peterson's term), to discern what God is doing in their spheres of influence, and to join in with God in ministry. Vision is not so much of an action that comes through a pastoral leader that then needs to be "marketed" to the congregation so that they will "buy into it." No, the Spirit is alive and active speaking in the midst of the congregation. The Spirit is impressing his will in the lives of people. Pastors, shepherds recognize this and are called to be intune with what God is saying in the life of the congregation. The vision that is then expressed is not something ex nihilo, out of nothing from on high, but something that is already present, already incarnated in our midst as the community of God's people. As the voice of God is discerned through pastoring, shepherding, worship, prayer, Scripture reading and so forth, the pastoral responsibility is to give voice to what has already been spoken in the life of the congregation. As this already Spirit-spoken vision is articulated it finds confirmation in the hearts of people because it has already been planted there by the Spirit. This requires pastoring to be a coming alongside the people of God, a being among the people of God, a being with the people of God.

How can a pastor who is cloistered in his/her study 20 hours/week preparing the Sunday message speak the voice of God already being spoken in the community? Though time needs to be spent in the study, the place for hearing the Word of God is amongst the people. Only then can the Sunday sermon speak the Word of God in such a way that it bears fruit in the lives of people, such fruit that enables people to see where God is active in the midst of their everyday world and invites them to participate with him in his mission.

Though there is much more to unpack regarding pastoring in this way of understanding ministry, I unplug here for now. Hopefully this provides enough for you to reflect upon your pastoral calling and your participation in helping the people to attend to God in their lives and their discerning and participating in the mission of God.

In the next phase I will begin to unfold some next steps in relation to pastoring as I see them. Until then, peace.

Meditation on Matthew 2:1-12

As we begin this new year of 2006, periodically I would like to reflect on Scripture and readings that relate to pastoring or shepherding. Yesterday, New Year's Day, I read Matthew 2: 1-12 (the visit of the Magi) as well as the first chapter of Henri Nouwen's work, Here and Now.

The Matthean passage relates that the magi sought to find the new born king of Israel -- who will shepherd God's people. Nouwen shared that we live life either focused on the past breaking into our present, or we live life in light of the future, of God's promise, telos breaking into our present.

As I reflect on these two readings -- side by side -- I am reminded that pastors are called to be shepherds who continually remind the people we are among and apart of (the "sheep") that we live our lives as God's people not in light of our past, but in light of the dream, the hope, the telos of God -- the reality of God's vision breaking into and creating our present. As pastors, we shepherd by reminding our people of this day after day -- we provide the compass for the living of their lives as the people of God, as the people called by God to participate with God in God's mission.

Its not just about New Year's resolutions -- rather our whole life as the people of God is lived in the reality of God's promised future creating our present. Pastors, shepherds, are the ones who remind the sheep that we live not by what we done or failed to do in the past, but that we live in hope realizing that our present is guided by the future that is already fulfilled and reaching into our present to draw, not only us, but all of creation into God's culminating future, purpose, telos. What a privilege it is to live in this way, and what a privilege it is to be the ones who keep this vision, this reality in front of the God's people to guide their living and their participation with God's present activity.

Peace.