Pastoral Musings - Three Attributes of a Pastor's Heart - Part I

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.