THE FREE PASTOR

Shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you; not for shameful gain, but eagerly. (1 Pet. 5:2)

The best and worst of times. Now you know what pastoral ministry is.

Becoming a minister is easy. At the very most, you will need multiple years of formal theological training at great financial, mental, and emotional expense to you and your family, an official approval from your denomination's ordination committee or assessment council, and a divine call from God. Piece of cake. It's being a pastor that is harder than all get-out.

There are lots of things they might teach you in seminary but you don't actually learn until you're nose deep in them. Things like:

• Churches really do split over carpet color.

• Firing volunteers is the pits.

• Leading formal church discipline against a friend is worse.

• Some women will be forever hurt that your wife doesn't want to be BFFs with them.

• You will have some meetings that you're not sure you will survive. Literally. Like, you might want to review your theology of self-defense and/or revisit your life insurance policy.

But also things like:

• Seeing enemies reconcile on the basis of the gospel is incredible.

• Counseling broken people into a time of healing is beautiful.

• Hearing people profess faith in Jesus is exhilarating.

Pastoral ministry is a trove of glories and deaths. It is the kind of cross- taking nothing can prepare you for except just doing it. John Newton conjures 2 Corinthians 6:10 in one of his poems:

What contradictions meet
In minister's employ!
It is a bitter sweet,
A sorrow full of joy.

The pastor can be the loneliest soul in the congregation, wandering out in the point man position, scoping the land for danger all by himself, yet always feeling the tug of those needing his attention on the back of his coat. The pastor is a multitasker not just of duties but of personalities and problems. Many Christians are focused on their own journey; the biblical pastor is too, but he's also focused on yours. And his and hers and the next guy's. In one day he might hold a dying woman's hand, grieve in the office with a couple on the verge of divorce, celebrate one hundred days of sobriety with someone, and then go home and laugh with his wife and kids at a Munsters rerun. The pastor is ministerially multipolar.

The vantage point of pastoral ministry is a heavy and secret thing. Good pastors aren't always spilling everybody else's guts, so one hour he may be rushing out on a benevolence call on his day off, and the next hour hear from another the accusation that he is selfish. (True story.) The accuser knows nothing of the benevolence call, and the good pastor does not feel compelled to defend himself using it as evidence. He has his own perspective and trusts God will vindicate him in due time when all things are revealed. The recipient of the benevolence has his perspective too. And the next day he may be asking, "But what have you done for me lately?"

Sister Serious is concerned about the way Sister Broken lets her son squirm during the worship service without disciplining him. But the pastor knows that Sister Broken is recovering from an abusive ex and is growing in Christ, and that to clamp down on her about her squirmy son at this point would risk further bruising a heart in need of healing. (Also, good pastors know that little boys are squirmy.)

Very few people lose sleep over "the way the church is going." But the pastor does.

The pastor and his flock are on cross-paths all week. Monday through Saturday, the laity are being drained from the pressures of daily life: jobs and families and shopping and just being human. The pastor runs counter. Monday through Saturday, he is being drained by the same daily life pressures, and besides that he is pouring himself out in grace as often as he can for the flock. But he is also constantly seeking to be filled up at every available opportunity, so that on Sunday, when his people enter the house of worship empty from the week's toil, he is full to the brim with the glory of God in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Then, in preaching, he is broken open upon the rock of Christ that the living water of Christ might flow out freely and flood the valleys of his people. The laity starts Monday fresh, filled. The pastor starts Monday exhausted, empty.

This is a difficult arrangement week in and week out, mitigated wonderfully by a community of believers empowered by the Spirit to carry each other's burdens and to encourage and edify each other outside the walls of the assembly, but it is still a difficult navigation, and many pastors and their congregations wind up too often as the proverbial ships passing in the night.

And yet, let's not overthink it, brothers. Let us not think more highly of ourselves than we ought. Oh, we poor pitiful pastors, we sorry lot, we put-upon unprevailers! We special class, whatever will we do with ourselves?

We can nail self-pity to the cross, first off.

Deflated and Puffed Up

What do we do with this sorrowful joy? We pastors, like other normal human beings, run one of two ways, generally.

First, we wallow. We feel deflated so we act deflated. We tell ourselves we are just being honest and transparent and authentic. Really we are throwing a pity party in our own honor. Twitter and Facebook have become the new arenas for public lament, and these days we get to see just how similar some pastors are in temperament to teenage girls. But even without the spectacle of social media, it is quite possible for pastors to see themselves as merely husks of men, empty shells wafted by the wind this way and that. Always tired, always empty, menial, miserable. Swing low, sweet chariot; nobody knows the trouble pastors have seen.

But for all the brought-lowness of the minister's task, this is not the way of pastoring. This is not the "boasting of weakness" Paul goes on about in 2 Corinthians 11 and 12. In 12:7 he says the weakness was given to him to keep him from being conceited! Not so that he would think less of himself, to paraphrase C. S. Lewis, but so he would think of himself less. This is how Paul sums up the purpose of weakness and suffering in pastoral ministry:

But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Cor. 12:9–10)

At the same time, we are learning from Paul that...