Trying to find a pastoral way of life

“We learned how he lived.” Reading these words gave me pause. They were written by the famed poet, Donald Hall. Donald wrote these words about his pastor. (Life Work, 6) His pastor’s name was Jack.

The words gave me pause because I had never heard of Jack or the small New Hampshire church that he pastored for years until he died. Unknown to the world and flawed he was nonetheless known by Donald and his wife Jane and a small community of people who came to follow Jesus. “Unknown to the world.” “Hmmm,” I ponder. “This fact is never a good measure of a pastor’s worth or place. Known by God. Known by those he served and loved where he was called. These, more local and mundane relationships and labors are truer measures of the pastor, the man, the call,” I think to myself.

The words also gave me pause as Scripture words plunge and splash into the pond of my thoughts.  ”Remember your leaders . . .consider the outcome of their way of life . . .imitate their faith.” (Hebrews 13:7) “A pastor’s way of doing a day is meant for apprenticeship,” I think to myself. “My way of life is supposed to promote thought and to invite imitation among those I learn to serve and love in Jesus.” Pastoral ministry is a vocation of apprenticeship in a way of life.

At this point, Anxiety began to pound its fists upon the door of my pause. “But I live a split life” I protest. The “way of life” that people encounter with me is public and oriented toward the strengths and surfaces of my days. People have my strengths to imitate: I preach Sunday, I teach on a weekday morning, I answer questions or offer counsel in my study, I lead monthly leadership meetings. People have my surfaces to imitate: how I smile or don’t, the music or movie I listen to or don’t, the way I hold my wife’s hand or don’t, the way my kids behave or don’t in the hallway after the service. “But these are moments of public doing, not personal and daily ways of being, not daily rhythms for doing a sustained life,” I counter within myself. “Is it just my moments of strength and surface that are meant to promote reflection and imitation among those I pastor?,” I ask. “Surely it isn’t less, but what about my daily weaknesses and depths?” “But people don’t want or respect a pastor’s weaknesses, ordinary rhythms or personal depths,” I counter. “To invite them there is to drop church attendance or to invite pain,” I say. “But what if people respond this way because they’ve been poorly apprenticed?”

At this point, frustration and self-righteousness crash into my pause. “What about me?!” I shout almost out loud. “How can I serve as an apprentice in a way of doing life if the pastors and leaders I’ve had offered their strength and surface, their pulpit and their handshake, as the thing I’m supposed to imitate and strive to make a norm?” “No wonder I’m hollowed out, emphasizing and chasing strengths and surfaces as a way of doing pastoral ministry! This is the normal model!”

A sense of quitting now joins the crowd of thoughts and questions and self righteousness that have infiltrated my pause. Somehow Paul offered those he served not only his teachings, but his patience, his sufferings, his daily life and his daily way of doing work for their view and imitation. (2 Tim. 3:10-11; 2 Thess. 3:7) “It had to be grace right?” I ask. “I mean, the One who let the disciples live with him and then said at the end, “love as I have loved you;” this One offers more than strength and surface for us to learn how a day can be inhabited, right?”  ”Jesus paid and purchased this kind of apprenticeship for pastors and people at the cross and by His grace didn’t He provide this for us?” But what will it mean if I start to order my day in such a way that I account for more than strengths and surfaces? What will it mean if I view, not just my public performances, but my daily ways of doing life as an open book for imitation?

I will freak out and enter a kind of detox for a while. Yep. I will lose some church attendance too perhaps. For many of us, giving not only the gospel but our very lives; teaching not only by offering information but also by invitation into relationally and actually practicing the work itself, is a foreign category. Since surface and strength is what we’ve been apprenticed in, some of us won’t know how to recognize the gospel health of weakness and depth that is being offered to us. Slow, steady, authentic, incomplete, imperfect, spiritual practice amid the actual alteration of the way we approach a day isn’t sexy, quick, or noticeable. It fidgets us and there is a church down the street that likely won’t require of us this discomfort of health. I will grow, so will others and so will the way pastors pursue their vocation. But those who stay and who want to learn a way of life . . . consider its outcome . . . and imitate it, will encounter a way of life with Jesus that they never knew existed beyond the strengths and surfaces.

In order to move toward this idea of apprenticeship and imitation as a pastoral way of life, I think I’ll have to reconsider the way I currently structure a day and the way I teach,” I say to myself. “What does that look like?” I think I’ll try to begin to address that in my next couple of posts. There is a lot here to think out and learn. What do you think?

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