Pedestals and Pastors

What is the role of a pastor? For that matter what is the role of laypeople in the Church? As I start out my time in New Start these are critical questions, not just abstract musings. The popular model right now seems to say that the pastors are the ones with a special calling, the ones who know everything, the ones who do ministry and the CEO’s of the Church. Laypeople are to give money to the pastors so that we can do the real work of the Church. This gives a huge amount of power to the pastor, power that we can use to do almost whatever we want.

Now I like power as much as the next hooligan, but I don’t think this is what Christ intended his Church to look like. Hebrews Chapter Five talks about how Jesus is our High Priest, and we are all priests under him. The Reformation took up this call as the “Priesthood of all Believers. ” What this means is that all of us are equal in the eyes of God, the pastor is not better than everyone else, nor does the pastor have some unique connection with God that no one else has. After all, most English translations have “pastor” appear only twice in the entire Bible. So how we manage to grab all the power in the Church for ourselves is a mystery.

Pastors today have allowed ourselves to be given all the power in the Church, and to be placed on pedestals. The only problem is that pastors do not have a unique connection with God, or a special right to power. By taking those places we have lifted ourselves up by pushing down everyone else, which is not right.

Instead, I believe that every person has a calling by God and every person can participate in ministry simply by following God. The pastorate is not here to tell everyone what to do, but to help everyone to grow close enough to God to hear what their own ministry will be, and then to help those same people to succeed at the ministry God has called them to through training, support, administration, discipleship, mentoring etc.

Many pastors give lip service to other ministries as a way of getting volunteers to follow through on the pastor’s pet projects, but for the most part the Priesthood of all Believers has been lost today. The idea that all believers can follow God equally, serve equally but in different ways, is almost completely ignored. We need to recover this concept for today. That is one of the reasons I am so excited and so nervous about New Start.

The people here have claimed the ministries of the Church as their own. That means I can help them succeed better and let them run on with what God has called them. However, it also means that together we will be forging ahead in areas few churches get to. And while that is a wonderful, it is also scary.

But as God leads us, I trust and pray that God will keep us all humble enough to work together to further Christ’s work and not get fixated on our own ideas. May God grant us all the grace, peace, and wisdom needed to walk together on this journey without trying to claim we’re the only ones on it.