Presbymergent Pastors and Elders
Jan Edminson listed the following four “discoveries” that she made with the emerging church:
- The pastor’s only responsibility, according to scripture, is to equip the saints for God’s service (Ephesians 4:11-12).
- The church exists to serve the community not its members.
- The role of Presbyterian elders is to be spiritual leaders, not to run the programs of the church.
- The Constantinian Church is dead and gone forever.
I couldn’t agree more about points 2 and 4, but I believe that 1 and 3 might be good for us to consider separately.
I really don’t like the “only” there. I like to think that I am a Christian before I am a pastor–so I would not ask my congregation to do anything that I would not do either. I think part of my job of equipping the saints is being one of the saints.
I realize that we cannot do everything ourselves, but perhaps our model should be Jesus (not that any pastor can live up to that one!) Christ equipped the Apostles, but he also healed, washed feet, etc.
I know, of course, that he did this primarily with his followers, but my gut still tells me that we need to “get dirty.”
I DO believe that equipping the saints is a PRIMARY responsibility of Pastors, I guess I just believe that I will be a better “equipper” if I am also a “doer.”
What do you all think the role of the pastor is? The role is pretty well defined, for better or worse, by the Presbyterians. Much less so by the Emergent-types. I believe that the pastor will be different in different church, that’s for sure. I think I would define the role of Pastor as “facilitator,” but I also think that pastors (at least as we know them) will be less and less necessary in Emerging churches.
Elders will be different, too. I know that they were never intended to be “program runners,” but I want them to be more than “spiritual leaders,” because I don’t want to separate spirituality from life. Right now, I’m thinking the primary role of the elder is “respected discerner.” How does that sound to you all?
Comment by the very left reverend on 14 February 2007:
The new FoG Task Force seems to be writing Jan’s assumptions into the new draft of the Book of Order, specifically placing the onus on elders to be “coaschs” rather than “players” (not the official language - obviously).
I also think she’s close on her assessment of pastors - the ordination language speaks of “being called out to a specific role”. To be sure, we are Christians first, but when a pastor wears the pastor hat, a “pastor” is the type of Christian they are to be in that moment.
Comment by Tom Robinson on 14 February 2007:
Drew, I really appreciated your comments. I think we pastors do need to get our hands ‘dirty’ with our involvement in the church at all levels. But we also need to leave room for others to find their gifts, and celebrate them by use. I’ve seen a lot of pastors who wanted to be ‘role models’ and then that became their main function. Result - the pastor as a ‘holy show-off.’ I know that’s not what you’re getting at, but it is a danger that we do a lot of things in the church so we can justify our position (or salary), rather than as a passion we feel for the mission of the church. As for elders being ‘chief discerners’ - that is really good. I think we need to work on that. I agree with you (I think) that we have pushed discernment off to the side in the name of busy-ness. We need to get our Sessions back into taking time to be quiet and listening for what God has to say.
Comment by Jan Edmiston on 14 February 2007:
I know I learn better by watching somebody else do it (as opposed to reading a manual). So I assume others also learn by watching me “do ministry.” I’m all for getting my hands dirty. My bigger problem is letting somebody else get his/her hands dirty, which is the fun/amazing stuff of ministry. We don’t want to let that part go.
If we are equipping others, we are — to some extent — working ourselves out of a job, which is the point. We want more and more people to take on the tasks of ministering in Christ’s name. There will always be something we can do.
The pastoral care piece (”letting” others do it) seems to concern mainline people most. When I wrote about this at CFSA (1-19-07) many of the comments lifted up issues like: lay people are too busy to offer pastoral care, church members will think the pastor is uncaring if she doesn’t do hospital calls, etc.
I want our elders to experience being the person who gets called to pray at the bedside of a dying friend, the one who gets the call to come when a baby is born — that is the extraordinary stuff of ministry that bonds people together forever. It shouldn’t just be for the pastor alone. And as a pastor, I should be thrilled when a parishioner wants to call his/her elder for prayer (instead of threatened).
Comment by drew on 14 February 2007:
yeah. I’m with you 100%. Cool
Comment by moose on 16 February 2007:
Drew,
I’m readin’ yer mail. There’s nothing more uninspiring than a pastor who equips others to do something they aren’t willing to do themselves, or a pastor who doesn’t see themselves as a “disciple” before, during, and after being a “pastor.”
While I wasn’t at the presentation you responded to in your original post, I do believe that we pastors have to be super intentional about how we communicate the nature and expression of our calls. Even saying something as simple as “the pastor shouldn’t be doing all the ministry” can communicate implicitly that he or she should be doing at least a significant portion of it. It can also communicate that the role of the rest of the body is to do what he or she can’t possibly find time to do (but would, and should, given sufficient energy and time).
The Presbyterian Church has defined (in the Book of Order, and de facto through our seminary educations) what a pastor is, and what a pastor does. To me, it smacks of maintaining job security. Much of our role definition through the centuries is simply not gleaned explicity (or even implicitly) from Scripture, yet we keep doing the same things. There is tremendous (intrachurch) cultural momentum behind its maintenance, and attempting to redirect that river may cost us our jobs.
My ongoing hope is that our seminaries will begin actually training equippers to equip. While I loved my seminary education, for the most part, I did not have one day of one class the entire three years on equipping saints for ministry. Not one. And as I’ve talked with colleagues through the years, virtually none of them did either.
So in terms of being pastors who lead like Jesus led, I posed this question to the staff of our church (which I gleaned from a source I can’t remember), and had them tape it to their computers, or to a visible spot on their office walls: “If you knew that you would be in your role for only three years, and you knew that there would be no one to replace you once you left, how would you do things differently?” This begs the question of equipping, and it has slowly but surely begun to change the way these ministry leaders operate. Very encouraging, but something that requires a constant revisit.