Vol 2:15 Pastoral Mission: Living Lives Which Point to God

I find myself reading memoirs of people I have come to respect over the years who have shaped my thinking, my ministering, my engaging the people of God, my trying to live my life under the reign of God. At the end of January I read Stanley Hauerwas’ memoir entitled, Hannah’s Child, and this past week I picked up Eugene Peterson’s memoir entitled, The Pastor. Both, Hauerwas and Peterson have shaped me as a person and as a pastor.

In reading Peterson’s memoir I am reminded again of my pastoral identity and what I seek to be about being and doing amongst a community of people seeking to be missional.

Peterson talks about the pastoral understanding as one involving witness. He states, “a witness is never the center but only the person who points to or names what is going on at the center – in this case, the action and revelation of God in all the operations of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” (p. 6).

Early in my pastorate, though I was a good listener and a good caregiver, a not-to-bad preacher and a pretty-good teacher, my pastoring was more about me than about who I was to be about pointing to. It is good I left the pastorate in 1993; it helped me re-discover God’s calling upon my life as I spent 10 years exiled within academia. In 2006 I entered the pastorate again a very different kind of pastor – thanks much to the writings of Eugene Peterson.

Even though at times I am tempted to still make it about me – when I am critiqued about a particular sermon, or missed opportunity, I am getting better at not making it about me. I am becoming better at being one who has the privilege of pointing out God, and the activity of God, to those within the community which I have the joy to serve.

I am discovering it is a long journey in the same direction as I seek to walk alongside with these people as they discover what it means for them to be called “a people of God.” In walking with them, I try to remind them of God’s presence in our midst, of God’s activity all around us, of God’s encounters with them and their encounters with God. In being one of them, I seek to guide them into reading and telling of God’s Story and Vision in Scripture so that it shapes our imagination as we try to live as the people of God in the world, for Scripture to shape the telling of our stories as we seek to live participating with God’s redemptive mission in the world. I try to help them begin their days in prayer – entering the day being aware of God’s presence with them – that we do not live our lives solo, but in step with the rhythms of the Spirit of God.

I am discovering that pastoring in this way is deeply missional – because it is all about focusing on God’s purpose and what God is about in the world. It is not about what I am trying to accomplish – my early years in pastoral ministry burned me as I attempted to do just that; rather, now it is an adventure of exploring, discovering, encountering God and what God is up to in the world, and encouraging a community of people who are discovering what it means to call themselves followers, disciples, and worshipers of Jesus, to be witnesses of God’s presence and God’s mission to those who are in need of healing, of salvation – people broken like us in a world that God came into to set free.

This Easter, as I point out God in Christ on the cross, I find myself giving witness to God’s love in which Christ took upon himself all the evil and suffering in the world meted out against humanity, and conquered sin and death for all humanity by being raised from the dead. To point out this hope, this reality, that all might be set free by being in Christ, is being deeply missional as a pastor.