Pastoral Musings
– Three Attributes of a Pastor’s Heart
What
does a person need in order to be a Pastor?
Undergraduate and seminary degrees inclusive of formal training in
Bible, Church history, theology, homiletics, liturgy and worship and pastoral care
and practice are self-evident. You
normally expect people to have the formal degrees and licensures of their
profession. A passion for Almighty God,
the Church and all things religious seems a reasonable necessity. A willingness to serve undeserving people
without expecting anything even thanks in return helps tremendously. Possessing sufficient creativity and
versatility to maximize the use of meager resources is often necessary
particularly in years of lean budgets and low attendance. As churches are not known widely for
administrative abilities, any skills you have in this area will only enhance
the work of the church where you serve. Are
you available and willing to collaborate with social workers, teachers, civil
servants, publicly elected officials, directors of not-for-profit entities and
community organizers as they strive to create a more just and equitable
society? The combination of education,
passion, selfless service, flexibility, administrative skills and commitment to
social justice will not necessarily transform a disciple willing to answer the
Lord’s call into a Pastor. I offer this
assertion as I near the twenty-fifth anniversary of my ordination as a Minister
of Word and Sacrament.
My
experience of the last quarter of a century reveals three essential attributes of
a Pastor’s heart.
First, I am learning to empathize more with other people’s pain and
suffering. In a phenomenal book about
forgiveness, Everett L. Worthington and his co-authors insist upon knowing the
story of the offender as a means of grace and forgiveness. Perhaps, if the offended party knew
background details about their victimizers, their hearts may soften toward them
and their desire for retribution may lessen.
Conceivably, the offender’s pain and hardships mitigate the type and
degree of punishment. Amazingly, the
victim may feel sorry for the offender.
To apply this reasoning to a congregational setting, knowledge of the
story of broken, hurt, defensive, bitter and contrary people who complain
incessantly might help observers to understand how they developed such negative
traits. Knowledge of the “back story”
enables a role reversal in which you exchange places with the protagonist.
As
a Pastor, I find this helpful as I better understand the behavior, choices,
thinking and characters of congregants particularly those persons appear to
have hardened personalities. The
difficult, unsentimental and exacting demeanor of a choir director is
understandable when you learn that her husband abandoned her for another woman
even though she tirelessly demonstrated her love with selfless chores. The manipulative, duplicitous and passive
aggressive tendencies of a lay leader are explicable when you learn that her
husband left her with four children to rear with limited resources. The resentment of a philandering husband and
financial challenges including sums of debt spill over emotionally into the way
another lay leader relates to other congregants. Instead of dismissing these persons and
others with similar stories, empathizing with them creates the possibility of a
mutually respectful and beneficial relationship.
Empathy
in its most practical sense means to “walk in the shoes of the other person.” In the foregoing instances, empathy
necessitates exchanging places with those broken-hearted, despondent and
disillusioned persons who no longer possess any reason or hope for kindness. Rather our chagrin and impatience, this
fellow brothers and sisters in the Lord need our longsuffering love which can
contribute significantly toward their healing and wholeness. “But for the grace of God, there go I.” That frequently mantra within church circles
crystallizes the need to empathize with the pain and suffering of other people. Had we faced the adverse circumstances of
many of the people whom we dislike and misunderstand, we would have similar
defects of character and personal incapacities.
As a Pastor, I am able increasingly to feel deeply within my heart the
pain of those persons whom I serve. Consequently,
when I am on the receiving end of inadvertent insults, indifference and
otherwise hurtful behavior, I realize the negative and equally hurtful context
from whence it emerges.
Another helpful
saying, “If you can see it in someone else, then you need to claim it in
yourself,” suggests empathy as a counterbalance to superfluously judging
others. Possibly, the attributes we
disdain in other people actually are traits we would like to eliminate. Persistent and intractable criticisms of
other people hint toward personal areas of growth. If you find perpetually that someone is
self-serving, then you may need to examine how deeply this quality lies within
you. Recently, I rejoice over the
progress in communication, understanding and empathy that a congregant and I
have made. Kindred spirits as
anal-retentive, compulsive and fiercely demanding personalities, we both operate
with an unrelenting certainty about the correctness of any situation. We insist upon strict and unwavering
adherence to rules, regulations, protocol and procedures. Trouble arises when we differ as to whose
interpretation of correctness prevails.
I take refuge in the black letter of the Book of Church Order. She
stands firmly upon the correctness of her interpretation of the Bible which
supersedes the former and demands compassion toward any human situation. As we unearthed the many layers of our
conflict, we actually discovered we shared a story of parallel childhood trauma
inclusive of parental abandonment, neglect, fear, economic challenge and an
inability to trust other people. The
totality of that pain during the formative years leads to being easily offended
and misunderstood. Religion partially
brought a sense of order to chaos and reliability in practice. Our similar backgrounds initially made us judgmental
of each other. As we began to talk as fellow disciples endeavoring to mature
genuinely and spiritually, we have learned to empathize with each other’s pain
and suffering. As a consequence, we
extend patience and “the benefit of the doubt” to each other.
