BLOG 9/12/13: EQUIPPING PASTORS? DON’T COUNT ON IT!
What in the world is a ‘pastor’ anyway? In one of the most enlightening passages in the New Testament that give insight into the form and purpose of the church, it is stated that it is the Risen Lord’s design that all of God’s people (also called ‘saints’) are to be equipped for their daily ministry in real life as mature and discerning participants and collaborators in the mission of God in the world (Ephesians 4:11-16).
Read that paragraph over again, please. Get it? All of God’s people are to be informed, communicative, mature, contagious, creative, and fruitful participants in God’s mission to reconcile the world to himself in the realities of life, i.e., in the lowest and most seemingly insignificant or in the most visible and prestigious places.
To this end Christ furnishes the community of his people with four necessary and symbiotic equipping gifts: apostle, prophet, evangelist, and teaching-shepherd (or, teaching-pastor). This final gift is the one that gives context and substance to the other three, and has to do with a clear understanding of the word, or teachings of Christ. (I commend to you my: The Church and the Relentless Darkness, pp. 137ff for further elaboration on these gifts.)
This passage is very urgent, pragmatic, and essential for the church, its mission and its message … but has been so often subverted and convoluted (bastardized?) into some notion of ‘clergy’, or ‘minister of word and sacrament’ (having nothing to do with gifts or equipping), which, rather than being equipping, it becomes rather: custodial, priestly, and creating an unequipped (or ill-equipped) passive company of ‘church members’ doing ‘churchy’ things, as though this were the purpose of it all.
But the good news is that the emerging generations (Millennials and 20-/20s) resist this hierarchical (from the top down) pattern either in business or in the church. These insist on being both collaborators and participants engaged in the process, active in dialogue, seeking common goals. They can be unimpressed by, and dismissive of ‘clergy’.
One has only to look at those church communities that are growing and contagious with the faith to find examples of this. And where those who are, ostensibly, the church professionals are not fulfilling this role of equipping, then God’s serious believers in Christ will find alternative fellowships and resources and assist each other in becoming equipped to maturity, and to ministry.
In a former age, the church was basically illiterate and the term parson (the person) was given to the pastor since he was the only literate person in the community and all were dependent on him (not many ‘hers’ in that era) to read and teach them scripture. No more. There are huge resources available to any even moderately educated followers of Christ, so they are not dependent on some weekly encounter with a pulpit, which may or may not be helpful.
Up front, I am partial to the ESV Study Bible, and The Word in Life Study Bible. Add to those InterVarsity Press’s New Bible Commentary (which will set you back about $55, but is well worth it since it is a marvelous, help both in content and interpretation), and its companion volume, the New Bible Dictionary (much less expensive). These are great tools. Add to these your access to Google, and Wikipedia and you are no longer dependent on church leaders who have forgotten the mission and message. And you can have great discussions on scripture and your daily ministries over coffee or beer—what a marvelous way to become mature participants in the mission of God!
