The Nature of the Job

I am a believer in Occam's razor. No, that's not some invaluable cutting instrument or obscure Christian sect or cult. Rather, it's the scientific assertion that, if two theories present the same predictions, the simpler one is generally better.

Simpler is generally better. I suppose that's why the clean lines of modern design appeal to so many; the minimalist interface of Google dominates the internet search market; and bookstore shelves are lines with titles such as Cooking for Dummies. Indeed, according to www.dummies.com, the "For Dummies" series boasts more than 150 million books in print covering more than 1,300 topics from selling your stuff on eBay to gardening, taking care of your pet to parenting, world history to world religions. But nowhere in their list of topics is "Pastoring for Dummies."

Certainly, there aren't many pastors who are dummies. In fact, historically speaking, pastors are generally among the most educated professionals in the community. But sometimes I wonder if we don't make the pastorate more complex than it needs to be.

Our Bible colleges teach us that pastors have to know everything about Scripture, a fair deal about psychology, a chunk about event programming, and a pile about speaking. Add to that the popular notions that pastors should be outstanding evangelists, volunteer recruiters and motivators, and even CEO's, and you begin to think that pastoring is the one exception to Occam's razor: there's nothing simple about this job.

Or is there?

I would submit that, in recent years, we have spent an awful lot of time and energy over-analyzing the pastorate. Some of the time, our motivations were pure: we wanted to explain the diverse and profound nature of the ministry and encourage each other to minister more effectively. But after seven years of pastoring, I am also convinced that some of the time, our primary interest has been to make ourselves seem more important. We talk about all the stuff that we do, from sermon preparation to counseling to managing staffs to board and finance committee meetings to conference calls to you name it, so that we can feel good about never really getting our hands dirty.

So we have all these beautiful churches with distinguished pastors scattered throughout our communities while, often right next door, there are people who are going to hell.

As a pastor, there will always be people and matters pressing for our attention. Sermon preparation, counseling, management, meetings, and conference calls are all important things that have to get done. But we must never forget that the primary task of of the pastorate is something called ministry.

According to the New Oxford American Dictionary, the word "ministry" has four different meanings including "the work or vocation of a minister of religion," "a government department headed by a minister of state," and "a period of government under one prime minister." Each of these definitions is familiar, but I think it significant that the fourth definition - the one that I'm talking about - is labeled by the editors "rare."

min-is-try: the action of attending to the needs of someone

According to this definition, the primary task of the pastorate is meeting the needs of people around us. This means that we must be observant enough to know others' needs and humble enough to set our own ambitions and desires aside to meet them.

Now, I understand that this seems simple, but the reality is that, for all too many pastors that I know - including, all too often, myself - this is an absolutely radical proposition. We tend to fill our calendars with study time, building committee meetings, and lunch appointments, but we never get our hands dirty to meet the needs of the people we serve.

The effects of this failure may be subtle for a time, but they will eventually lead to disaster. To illustrate this, consider a conversation one of my non-pastor friends had just a few weeks ago. While visiting his parents' church for the first time in a couple of years, my friend heard the pastor criticize the congregation (from the pulpit, no less) for lowered giving and a number of critical projects that no one had stepped up to do. After the service, my friend asked his dad about the whole message and was told that the church would probably be more eager to give and complete the projects if they saw their pastor doing the same.

This congregation was no longer concerned with meeting the needs of the church, much less the community around it, because they saw that their pastor wasn't.

As a pastor, regardless of all the other ways people describe who we are and what we do, it is essential to remember that our primary task is quite simply to meet other people's needs and make a difference in their lives. This realization must impact everything that we say and do. If people can't apply our Sunday morning message to their lives, it's time for some rewrites. If we're too busy with our meetings and conference calls to deliver groceries to a family in need, our schedule needs to be cleared. If we're more concerned with how we look or what we need our staff to do or where our next lunch appointment is or even how many people were in church on Sunday and/or how much they gave...

It's time to get back the basics of what it is to be a pastor. It's time to make a difference in people's lives by attending to their needs. It's time to minister.