Show your work. Process matters—it’s more important that you tried to solve the problem the right way than it is that you got the right result, because it’s more predictive of whether or not you’ll get the next answer right, and the one after that, and the one after that. What matters isn’t coming to the right conclusion by whatever method works for you, but whether or not you understand the real problem and how it works; shortcuts may seem to work at first, but in the long run they just mess you up and put you behind.
Pastoral ministry likewise isn’t primarily about getting the “right answer” to produce the desired results; it isn’t about whatever seems to work. Rather, it’s about all the things that lie behind that. When you get right down to it, being a shepherd in the flock of Christ (in the flock, because even as we serve as shepherds, we’re still sheep ourselves) isn’t about doing, it’s about being; skills are valuable and important, but in the last analysis, it’s not really about the skills you have, it’s about your character and who you are.
To be sure, doing is involved, because being is expressed in doing—character is not only expressed but realized (one might even say incarnated) in action, and to say (as I would) that pastoral ministry is a way of life is necessarily to say that it involves the activities and patterns of behavior that make up that way of life. All true, and all important. That said, you could have someone who possesses all the skills and does all the activities of a pastor, who has the title of pastor and the paychecks to prove it, who is in no real sense a pastor. In point of fact, all too many churches do (and some of those churches are quite large and successful on the outside).
This is one reason why—and this is going to sound quite odd and countercultural, and strangely connected—I don’t agree with those who bemoan the language requirements which are set by some of our denominations and seminaries. I’ve read and heard many pastors treat their knowledge of Greek and Hebrew as functionally useless, and the time spent learning those languages as time that could have been better spent on “useful,” “practical” things like more counseling classes and classes in administration; I think such attitudes and complaints are misguided and unprofitable.
Now, in saying this I don’t disparage counseling classes, if they’re the right sort, or the value of administrative ministry; I’m sufficiently ungifted as an administrator to have no doubt of the importance of such tasks, and the people who taught me pastoral counseling gave me a great deal of insight into how people function, both as individuals and as groups. I’m particularly grateful for the introduction to family systems theory; nearly a decade on, I’m still working to really understand it (I need to reread Friedman’s Generation to Generation again here soon), but what I have grasped has been incredibly valuable over the years.
I say that particularly because that work and that study has been valuable in more ways than just the work of counseling; it’s not just about programs and skills and checklists, it helps me understand people, and that’s important in everything I do (as it is in everything anyone does). Thus, for instance, it’s made me a better preacher, because you can’t preach effectively over any significant period of time to people you don’t know. You can’t really minister effectively in any way to people you don’t know, and so anything that helps you come to know and understand people is of great worth across the whole range of pastoral ministry. It’s a kind of knowledge and understanding that forms us and shapes us as people to lead and care for other people, and that’s the kind of learning that helps us to be good pastors.
The same is true of the time and effort spent learning Greek and Hebrew. This is, as I said, an odd and countercultural claim, in the face of the many pastors who disparage their ability to decline eimi or distinguish between the Niphal, the Hiphil and the Hitpael, but it’s true nevertheless. The disparagement of language skills rests on two assumptions: one, that they are only useful in preaching, and two, that one can preach just as effectively without them. I’m firmly convinced that both of these assumptions are false, and for the same reason: we’re called to lead from the Scriptures (as John Piper and others reminded me this week), and to do that, it’s at least as important that we understand the Scriptures from which we’re leading as it is that we understand the people whom we’re leading. As such, anything that helps us go deeper into the word of God is of great worth in every part of pastoral ministry, not just preaching.
Since the root and foundation of leadership is self-leadership, this begins with the effect of the word of God on ourselves, in forming and shaping our souls. I will grant, certainly, that if working with the language is just an academic exercise, if you’re only open to the word of God on an intellectual level as a kind of linguistic jigsaw puzzle, then yes, the intricacies of Greek morphology and Hebrew grammar will be a barren field indeed, sowed with the salt of skepticism and watered with the blood of indifference; but the fault there lies not in the language, but in the student, and no one who approaches the text in such a way is likely to find any life in it no matter what they do. At that point, the only ministry that remains is worldly ministry, for the heart of truly pastoral ministry—the gospel—isn’t present, and isn’t likely to be.
The reason for knowing the original languages, for studying the cultures into which the original authors wrote (as in, for instance, the invaluable work of Dr. Kenneth E. Bailey), and for other learning of that sort is that it makes us better able to read the word of God and study it seriously. The value in that isn’t in the information we gather, but in the way that information sharpens our eyes, opens our ears, and pricks our hearts to see God, to hear him speak to us, and to increase our love for him. The purpose in all this is to clear out those things that insulate us from the gospel, and to intentionally open ourselves up for God to work on our hearts and minds through it (including breaking down all those things that we use to defend ourselves from the gospel). The goal isn’t to be a scholar and be able to write papers, though that may have its uses: the goal is that, in the words of Richard of Chichester, we may know Christ more clearly, love him more dearly, and follow him more nearly, day by day by day.
The key here is that if we truly seek to be ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ, if we want to be pastors in any meaningful sense, we need to remember that our ministry isn’t redemptive—only the ministry of Christ is redemptive—and that we really have nothing of eternal value to give the people we serve except Jesus Christ and him crucified, resurrected, and ascended; we need to repent of the attitude Crawford Loritts exposed and dissected so brilliantly and mercilessly during the panel discussion at the GCNC: “There is an arrogance in the preachers of this generation in the tacit assumption that God is inarticulate.” I would only add that that arrogance is multiplied in the implicit assumption that we as mere human beings are capable of making up for that presumed deficit in God.
To draw from the Rev. Dr. Piper’s plenary message at the GCNC Tuesday night, we can only live the life to which Jesus calls us by the power of God, which is by the grace that is in Christ Jesus, which comes to us through the word of God; it’s by his word that he speaks his grace into our lives so that we would experience and live into (and out of) the power of our redemption, and so it’s that word and that alone that we should seek to give those whom we serve—indeed, it’s the only way we can serve them—in administration and counseling no less than in the pulpit. To do that, we need to honor our first responsibility as in fact our first responsibility: to marinate ourselves in the word of God, let it soak into us in every way possible, in thoughtful reading and reflective thought, and of course in constant prayer.
As a result, I think the criticism that seminaries spend too much time on “academic” things like languages and exegesis and not enough on “practical” things like counseling is misguided, for two reasons. First, the latter are, in reality, applications of the former, and as any good preacher knows, one must first present the truth before one can apply it. Second, the former are things which can in fact be taught in a classroom setting; the latter, I don’t believe can be—they must be learned by doing. (The same is true of preaching, but one can do preaching in a classroom setting and learn some of what one needs to know from that; this isn’t true of most of the other applied pastoral arts.) The most that a seminary can do is train one in the use of the tools for these aspects of ministry and give one a sense for how to learn in the doing (which is what, among other things, field education is supposed to be for, though in my experience it’s rather hit and miss as to whether it succeeds in that purpose); to become good at such matters takes time and experience and the lessons of failure and the faithful wounds of trusted friends and colleagues in ministry as we minister together.
It takes all these things to shape our mindset and form our souls and give us the opportunity to develop the confidence to take on the responsibility which God has entrusted to us to be heralds and ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ—which is, in the end, the confidence that God is faithful even when we’re not, and that his gospel is sufficient even though we’re not, and that his love is enough even when ours isn’t. The only way to be a pastor is to attend to the process—to what God is doing in our souls and in the souls of the flock he has placed in our care—and to be a pastor, trusting him for everything. There are no shortcuts, and there is no substitute. Just show your work, and let God be the answer.