What Do Pastors Do?

          Did you hear the one about the Scottish pastor who was, according to his parishioners, “invisible six days a week and incomprehensible on the seventh”? That captures it pretty well! What do pastors do, anyway?

            Last week, I suggested that the role of the pastor is to keep the community attentive to God. This is, quite obviously, different than producing something, marketing something, or selling something. The pastor’s means of going about his “business” (a completely inappropriate term, I suppose) is prayer, study, counsel, Sabbath-keeping, leadership, and worship. In our increasingly secularized, post-Christian culture, these means of engaging in vocation are increasingly alien, perhaps even scandalous.

            Many pastors have resisted these alien practices and taken a different path—that of CEO. The company, of course, is the church, and the product is, of course, Christians. Pastors produce Christians! (And who wouldn’t want that?) The only problem with this is that people don’t produce Christians. The most gifted celebrity pastor out there has not produced one single Christian. Only the Holy Spirit produces Christians. People are important vessels, critical in bearing witness to Christ “that all may believe.” The key word, however, is “witness.” People serve as witnesses to the reality of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the focus. Emotional manipulation, “car shows”, and a rocking band will certainly attract people. But shallow ministry will only produce shallow Christians. A shallow sense of vocation (one that is focused more on the bottom line of a budget or membership list) will reflect a shallow church.

Ninety percent of the Christian churches who will be worshiping in the U.S. this morning will meet as a gathering of less than 150 souls. The pastors who lead them will likely be very ordinary men trying to be true to the pastoral vocation of making people attentive to God. Men who pray, study, counsel, keep the Sabbath, and proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ. If you ask many of these pastors what they did over the course of their week, they will not list off an impressive array of activities: time in prayer, study in the office, visits to the homebound or hospitalized, meetings with leaders. More prayer.

Here’s the thing: I don’t want to be invisible. I surely don’t want to be incomprehensible. In fact, I work hard at being both available and comprehensible! However, none of this is about me. As pastor, I simply want to hold forth Christ, that all might believe in Him.

For Faith Community Church, the same holds true: it is not about you, but it does involve you! You don’t hold forth yourselves or others (“How cool are we!”). You hold forth Christ as you become increasingly attentive to the Living God at work in you and in the world.

I am very grateful for Faith Community Church and for the call to serve as your pastor. It is a joy to together live into this goal of holding forth Jesus Christ. May He look with grace and kindness on the ministrations of His people. Amen.

Christ be with you this week, Church. Go in peace.