Before I Was a Pastor

There is a subtle temptation in ministry that few people talk about. It is not the temptation to abandon the calling, but to confuse the calling with the self. Pastors often become the role they perform. We are introduced as pastors before we are known as people. We are expected to have answers before we are allowed to have questions. We become caretakers of everyone else's souls while quietly forgetting that our own souls still need tending.

I am grateful to be a pastor. I would not exchange this vocation for another. But I have been learning that pastoring is not the foundation of my identity. Before I preached a sermon, I was a beloved child of God. Before I shepherded a congregation, I was a sheep following the voice of the Good Shepherd. Before I am called to love, I am, first of all, beloved. My first calling was not to ministry but to communion.

Yet there is another truth that refuses to let me settle too comfortably. While pastoring is not my identity, neither is it merely a task. While there should be a healthy differentiation between the task and the person, one should also embrace the truth that both make you who you are. A vocation always calls upon the whole person. God never asked for my sermons alone. He asked for me.

Walter Wangerin Jr. writes: "The preacher is not a mouth alone, self-effacing that God alone shows through (when that is the case, God then is a mouth alone, and that is all of Him which shall show through). The preacher in all of his parts is the proclaimer of God: his wonder, his humor, his faith, his body, the tone of his voice as well as its words, his experience! The entire drama of his own relationship with God, both in sinful enmity and in holy forgiveness..."

That may be one of the most liberating descriptions of ministry I have ever encountered. God does not bypass our humanity to accomplish His work; He redeems it. Our laughter, our tears, our failures, our repentance, our delight, our exhaustion—none of these are interruptions to ministry. They are the very places where grace becomes visible. Perhaps that is why I have become suspicious of a ministry culture that rewards polish more than holiness, image more than integrity, performance more than presence. We have become experts at appearing spiritually composed while quietly neglecting the ordinary work of becoming whole. We celebrate giftedness and overlook character. We applaud productivity and call it faithfulness. The result is predictable: exhausted shepherds trying to convince weary sheep that abundant life is real.

The Church does not need more religious professionals who have mastered the appearance of strength. It needs pastors who have learned how to repent. It needs leaders who can laugh without guilt, rest without apology, confess without fear, and receive grace as freely as they proclaim it. The world has enough celebrities. It is starving for saints. Perhaps the most pastoral thing we can do is not to appear extraordinary but to become deeply, honestly human in Christ. People do not need to meet an untouchable minister. They need to meet someone who has been touched by grace.

After all, the Shepherd we follow did not save us from humanity. He entered it. And if the Incarnation teaches us anything, it is that God is not ashamed to work through ordinary, fragile lives. Neither, then, should we be.