A year ago I read of a Presbyterian pastor in the United States in America who resigned from his pastoral work due to the heavy burden he could no longer bear in the ministry. I can identify with him, to an extent, in his rant regarding the demands of pastoral ministry. His main reason for resigning, however, is a misconception of what a Christian church is, what a pastor is, and how a pastor ought to be conducting himself as a minister of Christ.
I am not a "successful" or even a "professional" pastor. In fact, I may not be the pastor that every church member wants or imagines to be. I may not fit the bill that every church board or pastoral search committee looks for in a pastor. And that is fine.
My three years of seminary training and more than twenty years of actual pastoral ministry have taught me that clear pastoral identity is important. The need for pastoral identity arises from the fact that many people in the congregation, including church leaders, have their own idea of what a pastor is. Even pastors themselves may have a confused understanding of their own calling.
Some of the parishioners have their own expectations of their ministers that are contrary to Scripture. So for a Christian minister who is unsure of what and who he really is in relation to his calling and ministry may fall into an unhealthy trap or yield to unrealistic expectations of everybody in the congregation.
To avoid such a situation, the pastor must understand and take seriously the center, the heart, and the soul of pastoral identity, which can only be found in the person and work of Jesus Christ. Christ is the essence of shepherding the flock of God. He is the good Shepherd (John 10:11) and the chief Shepherd of His sheep (1 Peter 5:4).
The Lord Jesus is the center of pastoral identity because everything the pastor does comes from Christ, on behalf of Christ, unto Christ, and for the glory of God in Christ. The pastor's authority, identity, and ministry spring from Christ's authority, identity, and ministry.
If the center and essence of pastoral identity is not Christ, the minister can be callous. He can do what seems right to him. He will be motivated by selfish ambition and personal glorification or he can just be everybody's man who yields to everyone's will and whims.
Most of the contemporary and liberal confusion in pastoral identity comes from the modern concept of professionalization of the ministry which is separated from the person and work of Christ. The influence of modernism and post-modernism in the church has affected the way ministers view themselves and conduct their vocation.
Some pastors have adapted the corporate model of serving the church making them the CEO of the church. Others prefer to function as professional therapists or psychiatrists prescribing to their parishioners from the pulpit or from their desk what to do and what to avoid in their lives.
Likewise, the influence of antinomianism and neonomianism plays a very significant role in messing up the pastoral identity in the thinking of the church and their pastor.
Antinomianism, on the one hand, with its emphasis on grace and love without moral and ethical standards, destroys the concept of the gospel and the role of law in the lives of the believers in the church.
It therefore diminishes the pastoral role to merely preaching or advocating God's love to the people without confronting their sins and disobedience or calling the saints to a life of repentance and godliness.
The error of neonomianism, on the other hand, with its inclination to preach salvation as initially by grace but the rest of the Christian life is by one's own work and strength, also distorts the whole gospel message and pastoral ministry.
As a result, it leaves the ministers to beat everybody with every sorts of moralistic and prescriptive preaching devoid of the grace of God in Christ and the power of God through the Holy Spirit.
The pastor who knows his identity and responsibility in Christ is able to address the church's tendency to destroy or distort the gospel message, which centers on the person and work of Christ Jesus, the Great Shepherd of God's flock and the Lord of the Church.
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