The Adventure of Pastoral Ministry?

Ought pastoral ministry to be one of the greatest adventures? Think of it. We are called to shepherd a congregation to participate with what God is doing in the world. We are called to help people attend to God so that their whole lives will be shaped by living under God's reign, praying and living out "your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." We are called to walk along side with others in their journeys encouraging them to be open to the Spirit of God's reconciling, transforming work in their lives. We are called to live in such a way that our speech, our actions, our prayers continually reveal that "Christ is before all things and in him all things hold together" (Col. 1:17) and that God is reconciling all humanity to himself and restoring all creation. Is there any greater adventure?

Someone remarked that adventure is anything that quickens our pulse. Perhaps one of the greatest tragedies of our time is that we as pastors are complicit with living our our ministry in ways which makes it one of the most staid professions around. I'm not saying that we need to go around gladhanding and smiling like used car salespersons, but we need to take seriously that we are involved in an adventure.

Any engagement in adventure involves being prepared, ready for unforeseen circumstances, taking risk, keeping our mind and wits about us, keeping our whole being focused on what we are seeking to accomplish. What makes adventure different from business is that though both adventure and business has some sort of telos in mind, adventure has the real risk of loss of life -- falling off the face of a cliff, sucked under by raging rapids. Though we make every preparation not to lose our life, the risk is there -- and that is what makes it adventure.

How are we willing to risk our lives in pastoral ministry? I confess that too often I have settled for comfort in ministry, when in fact we have been called to adventure -- and to lead others in this adventure as well. "Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it" (Mark 8:34-35).

Reframing the Preaching Task

One of the last solo activities in pastoral ministry is preaching. Pastors are expected, by themselves and by congregations, to spend a significant amount of time in the study to do the necessary exegesis, to hear what God wants to say. Some suggest that pastors spend about 20-25 hours per week in the study.

But if we are a part of the Body of Christ, should preaching in its preparation and its execution be a communal activity, rather than the solitary activity we have made it out to be. Now we all know that the best preaching preparation cannot just happen in the solitude of the study -- a pastor who prepares and preaches well must be actively and intentionally pastorally engaged in the life of the community-- otherwise their preaching is devoid of incarnational relevance.

However, I am suggesting there is another kind of reframing that needs to take place in the preaching event for pastors at the beginning of the 21st century. It is somewhat arrogant of us as pastors, even with all our training in biblical and theological scholarship, that we think that we can hear what God wants to say to the congregations we serve by ourselves. We know we cannot do all the ministry alone, so why do we think we can discern, hear what God wants to communicate through his Word to us alone.

I think as pastors we need to explore doing our sermon preparation with Sermon Preparation Groups (SPG). These groups would be made up of key representative people within our churches who come together weekly, to reflect together on the passage of Scripture to be preached, in order for there to be a communal, rather than a solitary, discerning of what God is saying to the community of faith. Afterall, theologically we are the body of Christ, and it takes the whole body to hear the breadth, heighth, depth, and expanse of what God is saying to us. As pastors we are only one set of ears, but an SPG brings a more comprehensive set of ears to hear what God is saying to the community which we are serving as pastors.

Now, this takes time. It takes a very different rhythm for sermon preparation. Sermons will need to be worked on 3-4 weeks out, rather than the same week in which we are going to preach. It requires a humility to recognize that God speaks through the entire congregation and not just through one or a few persons. The role of the preaching pastor in all this is to hear what God is saying as the SPG attends together to Scripture, and then gives shape to it and articulates to the congregation -- "this is what we are hearing God saying to us this morning."

By having mutlitple ears to hear what Jesus is saying to us as a community, preaching moves away from a performance of God's Word, to a word which is spoken into the hearts of a congregation that has the power to transform -- because it will be a word which is already connecting with what is going on in the life of the congregation -- even if it is a prophetic word.

This kind of preaching has already been digging around in the soil of the congregation and so speaks much more directly, pastorally, and incarnationally into the life of the community.

There is much more to unpack regarding this, and it would be good to hear from all of you reading this post. In some other post I will explore how preaching might be proclaimed communally, in more than one voice.