PASTORAL-PROPHETIC INTEGRITY

Once a month I have breakfast with a bunch of guys from our congregation, a couple of whom have stopped attending.  They are all conservative Republicans.  Our conversations are about life issues, politics, cultural shifts, church, Bible, and Jesus.  Our disagreements are significant on many issues. Yet, we are civil and we listen to each other.  It is Bible and Jesus what bind us together. 

Our conversation usually steers towards pastoral leadership and the question: What does it mean to be a pastor?  Why? Because they are all critical of our pastor because he talks too much politics and social issues.  I suspect a good portion of their criticalness is because his positions lean to the "left" and they are quite "right."  Personally, I am pleased with his positions and focus, and given the other staff and their pastoral bents, there is a nice balance, and fleshing out of the fullness of the Biblical witness.

At our last breakfast, I commented that the pastor is to preach Christ, and to flesh out the fullness of the Biblical witness.  Sometimes that means lifting up the comfort, the forgiveness, the reconciling love of Christ,  and at other times proclaiming the edgy, critical challenge of Christ and the Biblical witness.  There is a balance between comfort and criticism, comfort and challenge.  Text in point: Luke 4, when Jesus returns to his home town, enters the synagogue and reads from Isaiah.  The text from Isaiah enjoins us to "bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, and to let the oppressed go free."  Furthermore, Jesus says his message will reach to the non-Jews because he will be rejected by the Chosen People.  The result of this exchange?  They take Jesus to a cliff and prepare to throw him over the edge.  Yet, here comes God's deliverance and Jesus "passed through the midst of them and went on his way." 

Pastoral leadership is crucial to the life and ministry of the congregation.  The ELCA is facing challenges as it confronts the exodus of about 1,000 congregations that have left the ELCA and joined other Lutheran expressions.  The main reason is how we interpret scripture.  The ELCA is not "literalistic" in its Biblical interpretation.  We give credit to historical context, meanings of words, the truths revealed through archeology, the insights of science, and the paradox within the witness.  Interpretation means asking questions and engaging doubt, allowing uncertainty to be part of the interpretive mix.

When it comes to social issues and politics, the ELCA encourages engagement of the issues, both from the pulpit and in study and action.  We cannot endorse candidates, but we are called to deal with the nuances and realities of the issues, putting all through the sieve of the Biblical texts.  This responsibility is made clear in the standard Letter of Call to pastors and in the Affirmtion of Baptism.

The ELCA expects pastors to bear witness to the fullness of Holy Scripture, to the fullness of Christ's life and message.  The ELCA is very Barthian: the pastor (and people) are to live a witness with "scripture in one hand and the newspaper in the other."  We also agree with Bonhoeffer: "We cannot experience the reality of God without the reality of the world; nor the reality of the world without the reality of God." The full world!  All the world!  "For God so loved the world...." The ELCA is not good at "spiritualizing" the Christian life, urging the faithful to somehow "live above" the fray.  We are kind of a "down and dirty" group.  Luther left the monastery for a reason!  

The question for the pastor is how he/she will present the fullness of the Biblical witness: the comfort and the challenge, the embrace and the criticality, the personal and the political to the congregation.  It is their calling, their responsibility, the measure of their faithfulness, the mark of their Biblical integrity.

My experience in the ministry has taught me that most pastors do a pretty good job living out the pastoral skills of comforting, speaking of God's forgiveness and acceptance.  The greatest challenge and the greatest gap has been that of PASTORAL FORMATION OF PEACE AND JUSTICE witness.  There is an imbalance between the PASTORAL  and the PROPHETIC witness, with the weight of time and effort going into the PASTORAL basket.  There needs to be a restoration of the balance.

Luther Theological Seminary in St. Paul, is going through a curriculum design process.  Their is a gap between PASTORAL FORMATION and PROPHETIC FORMATION.  The Joint Peace with Justice Committee is going to present a proposal to correct this balance.  We believe this correction is necessary for the faithful proclamation of the fullness of God's Word.

NEXT TIME: A DESIGN FOR PROPHETIC FORMATION 

Peace!