Being a Pastor: 12 years on

The 12^th anniversary of my ordination and my 40^th birthday are both coming up next month. I served in two different contexts through a pandemic, I’m heading into the 3^rd year at my second call, and am also finishing up a 14-month Vice Pastorship. 

With all that, I am feeling a bit reflective regarding ministry these days. I recently remembered a post I wrote two years into my first call, back when I thought I had it all figured out. It was titled: To Do: A barebones list of the pastor’s task as I understand it and it is quite good, well worth a read. I thought, with an extra decade of experience, I might offer a similar post. This post looks at the pastoral task with a wider scope, less a week-to-week list and more long-term themes of ministry. Less about doing and more about being.

Name the core of your ministry, at least for yourself:

                  This job is weird; you are writing up a report for the council one minute, sitting with someone who is dying the next, choosing between two or three seemingly identical copiers, interpreting a 2000-year-old document in a way that is faithful to its original meaning and relevant to today, and then pushing carts full of food to people’s cars at the food pantry. I think of this experience as Ministerial Whiplash. On top of experiencing the variety of ministerial tasks, there is perception of these tasks. There are literally hundreds of people (both in the congregation and outside it) who have assumptions and definitions of what your job as pastor is and ideas about how you ought to do your job. Because this job can be so multifaceted, almost all of their definitions are at least a little true. 

Even the standard definition of Ordained Ministry in my denomination—Word, Sacrament, and Other Duties as Assigned, falls apart when it comes to that third part. Duty is broad and the question of who is doing the assigning is awkward, to say the least.

                  So, every 3 to 6 months, take stock of what you understand faithful ministry to be, and keep that definition close at hand, perhaps review it once a week. For example, the current iteration of what I understand ministry to be is: Receive God’s Grace, Share Agape, Spread the Gospel. That might sound too simple to be useful, but it is the lens I try to look at all the ministry tasks that come across my desk. It keeps me grounded when the weight of ministry starts to grind me down or blow me off course.

Be clear about time use:

                  This is a two-fold task. 

On one hand, have a system in place to process all the things you need to get done in a week. I use an eclectic hybrid of Getting Things Done, How to Squeeze Blood from a Turnip, and Sunday Comes Every Week. 

Additionally, I create a weekly chart with each day cut into thirds. I prioritize by day all my known tasks for the week and order the week for myself in a way that I have a third of a day that isn’t work each day, and one day off a week.

For example:

	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
Morning	X	X		X	X		X
Afternoon	X		X	X	X		X
Evening		X	X

If you don’t control the parts of ministry that are in your power, you have no chance of riding the unexpected parts of ministry to a faithful place.

                  On the other hand, it is important to define what is and isn’t work for you—so define what you understand to be your pastoral vocation. For example, for me, morning prayer, edifying Christian reading (even when it leans in a continuing education or bible study preparation direction), and evening devotional bible reading are not work, not part of my vocation as an ordained person. Instead, they are part of my vocation as a baptized Child of God.

This division might seem pedantic, but one of the dangers of the ministry is to simply be a “professional Christian” instead of a Christian called out of community to administer Word and Sacrament. This danger is two-fold: 1. the laity of the community can never measure up to your “expert Christian” doings and 2. you can become so professional that you cease to be Christian, the ordination rite supersedes the Baptismal sacrament—The road to hell is paved with the bones of bishops and the skulls of priests.

Protect the vulnerable:

                  This is a hard one to write about. Without saying too much, there are abusers and predators out there, both ordained and lay, who see the Church as a place to misuse power and its ministries as existing for their personal gratification. You will encounter theft and graft, physical, mental, and sexual abuse, power plays and hurt people hurting people.

You are the fluffy sheepdog among the flock who puts the wolves on notice. Your job is to be the “bad guy” who asks the right questions, notifies the right authorities, and stands between the predator and the victim.

I say that you’re the “bad guy,” because doing the right thing often means conflict and consequences, and most people really don’t like either of those things.

The cavalry isn’t coming, but colleagues care:

                  One of my naivetés early on in ministry was an assumption that a Presiding Bishop or a Seminary Professor figure would swoop in and save me if things got really bad. It took me a frightening ER visit with chest pains that turned out to “just” be a panic attack to realize that, as a solo Pastor, no one else will take care of you. There are no training wheels; this is a live fire exercise. The buck stops with you, especially when it comes to your own health and safety.

                  There is a saying attributed to Luther, “The Pastor is the Bishop of their congregation.” Now some folk cling to this quote because they think that makes them the answer person in their congregation, or it allows them to boss people around, or what have you. But this quote is getting at the buck-stops-here-ness of being a Pastor. You are the most responsible person in your ministry context. 

                  That said, there are colleagues out there who will have your back. Go to Synod things, be active in your cluster/district/whatever they call a grouping smaller than a Synod where you are, do what you can keep those connections fresh; relationships take practice. Ministry done alone is just asking for the devil to swoop in and poison all you’ve done.

Partner with everyone, as long as they play nice:

                  There has always been a Pentecost sort of ideal in the Christian faith, that diverse communities sharing their unique gifts with one another as partners is good and holy. Sadly, for most of Christian history denominations and congregations were too well off to live into that ideal—this period of self-sufficiency and relying on a variety of props rather than the Gospel and the Spirit, is often called Christendom. Well, as Christendom is rightly humiliated for its sins, Christianity may now be in a place where we HAVE to live into that ideal.

As such, connecting with communities and organizations around you who do parallel good works is paramount. Be interested in what ecumenical partners are up to and consider how you can be faithful together. Consider too the ways secular organizations might be doing Gospel work unaware and see if you can join them in it!

That said, the humiliation of Christendom doesn’t always goad congregations to the Christian ideal of healthy partnership, and secular organizations don’t always get the church. Sometimes potential partners are unhealthy or even predatory. Secular organizations can see your membership roll as a donor list. Unhealthy congregations can see another congregation as a thing to be cannibalize for spare parts, offers of Christian partnership can be taken as a thing to be consumed in the hopes of returning to the ill-gotten riches of Christendom.

So, as with most things in ministry, be open, but also trust and verify. Discernment is key. 

Summary:

                  Between my initial more granular take on ministry and my current crop, there are 15 bits of advice. Some overlap and some contradict. The earlier seem a little more optimistic and surer, the latter more tentative and cautious. I’m writing them down as an exercise for myself—externalizing my ruminations, but maybe some of them will be helpful for other people in ministry as well.

I can’t wait to see where I am at in defining my pastoral task in another decade’s time! What wisdom will more years of ministry and more grey hair in my beard lend to me?