How and why has the role of pastor changed?

This question could go in a variety of different directions, so I thought I would start by asking some further questions (feel free to explore more through related posts, comments and emails):

1. How has the recent trend of multi-site churches affected or will affect the role of pastor in these churches?
2. Because the church has shifted over the last 25 years or so to larger congregations, how has this change affected the role of pastor?
3. How has the transition to more multi-staff churches with more specialized roles (in comparison to the past that saw smaller church congregations with a more general role of the Pastor) affected the role of pastor?
4. How has the media and internet affected the perception of the pastor? It is a unique phenomena in the history of the church that the average person in the pew compares (consciously or unconsciously) their pastor with the best preachers, leaders, administrators and counselors in the world?
5. How has pastoral specializations based on age/genre affected how we understand the role of pastor (youth, children’s, women’s, young adult, etc.)?
6. Has the church modeled much of its ministry and the role of pastor after the business world – where more and more pastors see the metaphor of their role as CEO rather than shepherd? Is this problematic?
7. Has the change of roles affected the contemplative nature of pastors – where there seems to be more and more expectations and less and less time to devote to prayer and the study of Scripture? Is this a problem?
8. Has the growth of multiple paid-staffs contributed to the the decline of lay-leadership and ministry?
9. How has this change of role affected theological education?
10. Is what the Bible teaches on pastoral ministry supportive of these changes, contrary to them, or ambivalent to them?

I am not making any judgments or remarks on particular models of ministry. I am just fearful that we are not asking any of these and other questions. Any change we make to how we “do church” will have short-term and long-term affects. I think we are often guilty of making changes without proper and adaquate reflection. I also get the sense that many of my colleagues are asking these question and there seems to be inadequate answers for them, if any at all.

How should we define success in pastoral ministry?

This question begins a series of questions on the theme of pastoral ministry for this week. I am asking this particular question because sometimes we misunderstand success as we evaluate our ministry as pastors.

Here are some ways that we traditionally evaluate “success” in ministry?

1. Numbers – how many people are coming?
2. What are people tell us – comments after sermons, ministry events, etc.?
3. Length of pastoral ministry in a particular location?
4. Size of building?
5. Size of church budget?
6. Debt load?
7. Number of ministries?
8. Baptism and Membership numbers?

These are a sampling of ways we can define what “success” is in ministry. Any others that you can think of and the problems you can see with some or all of them?

Taken together, they are all important in overall evaluation but this traditional list is still lacking a dimension that we too easily ignore. This dimension is the subjective, less quantitative characteristics that are often neglected but are often what distinguishes healthy and successful churches. Therefore, I think we should evaluate our churches with the following questions (along side the traditional objective questions above)?

1. Do we have open arms that reflects the love for others that Jesus demonstrated?
2. Do we have good relationships among ourselves?
3. Do people know there spiritual gifts and are they using them?
4. Is it difficult to find and identify ministry leaders?
5. Do we have openness for disagreements and can we handle conflict with love and respect?
6. Do we, as a community, enjoy being together?
7. Does the average church member have good healthy relationships with people in the community who are unchurched?
8. Do our worship services have an element of excitement about them?
9. Do our pastors, elders and leadership get along and enjoy each other?
10. Do people participate in the worship service?
11. Does our budget reflect our values?
12. Do we know, and are we doing, something about the needs of our community?
13. Do we show a heart for missions and is it reflective in our actions?
14. Is laughter a common sound in our foyer, classrooms and sanctuary?
15. Is our teaching engaging, biblical, contextual, etc.
16. Are we compassionate to others? Do we mourn with those who mourn?
17. Are people’s lives being changed by the Spirit of God and do we, as a community, celebrate those changes.
18. If our church ceased to exist would our community notice? If not, why not?

I understand that these qualitative questions may seem idealistic and problematic, as they are difficult to track and report on, but don’t they reflect a deeper level of success than our traditional quantitative questions?

My recent “question series” of blog posts seems to be very well received. Thanks for reading and commenting (both through blog comments and via email). In fact, I would invite you to be a part of the question process further and let me know of some questions you would like me to ask. In fact, an email I received today with a suggested question has prompted a series of questions on pastoral ministry that I will pursue this coming week.

So, thanks for reading, commenting and emailing. I look forward to exploring these questions together with you. Your comments and emails are always welcomed and encouraged. In fact, if you would like and are so inclined, I invite you to take these questions to your own blog and develop your own thoughts further (however, for the sake of connected discussion, please place a comment on my post with a link to yours so there is a thread to the discussion).

Thanks again for reading.

Why do we, in the evangelical church, fear church tradition?

The reason this question was prompted by me this morning is that it so happens to be the Sunday of Epiphany and the evangelical church we attended had a vision Sunday with no mention of Epiphany. There is nothing wrong with a vision Sunday and similar services would have been held across North America. I guess I wonder why we don’t reach back into church tradition and remember some of the important dates on the church calender – dates the Church has celebrated for hundreds of years, such as the Sunday of Epiphany.

I remember preaching a couple of years ago on this particular Sunday and tackled the idea of Epiphany (preaching on the narrative of the Wisemen acknowledging Jesus as King). Most people in the church commented that had no idea that the Church has celebrated this date for over a thousand years now.

I am not saying that we need to be “traditional” and go back to some sort of ancient Latin service. However, maybe in our post-reformation theology (which rejects the authority of tradition, saying that our authority is in scripture alone – an important distinction), we have moved to0 far in this direction and have rejected tradition all together.

I actually think if we educated the typical evangelical on the Church calender, they would gain deeper meaning and insight. In fact, it may even help us slow down and reflect on the dates we do celebrate that too often seem to surprise us (such as Easter which has Ash Wednesday and Lent leading up to it).

There has to be more room for tradition and the acknowledgment that we, the Church, don’t stand in isolation as but are apart of the Church past, present and future.

Do we at times loose sight of the proverbial forest through the trees when we study theology?

As a theology student and pastor, I have to admit there are times when I can loose sight of the big picture and get lost in my search to understand a specific aspect of theology. Don’t get me wrong, it is vital to understand God and specific aspects of Him, but that should never replace our marveling and worshipping Him. Like a botonist who studies flowers and gets so caught up in one aspect of a flower, such as pollination, and forgets to smell the scent that pollen brings, we too can can get caught up in understanding God and forget to worship, marvel and know Him. The act of theology is vital and a privilege to do, but I don’t want to loose track of the forest for my study of the trees.