Pastors often find themselves struggling to survive in the wilderness of the contemporary church scene. How do they remain faithful in light of the marginalization of organized religion, denominational strife, rapid demographic change, falling numbers and a general malaise among church members? Many pastors feel helpless, others hopeless. Sociologists and pollsters diagnose the problem but can't seem to come up with a solution. Is there hope?Author and pastor David Rohrer believes there is. John the Baptist also lived in the wilderness, yet crowds journeyed there to hear him. Why? Because John "affirmed what people already knew: that they were in desperate need of something more than the mundane practices of a religion that had been cut off from its source of life." John called people to remember their covenant relationship with God, which was established in the wilderness, and to let God guide them once again across the Jordan and into the Promised Land.Pastors, says Rohrer, "don't primarily exist to build and maintain the institution of the church. We exist to do a particular work through the church. In short, we don't simply have an institution to create, refine or maintain; we have a gospel to preach." John's prophetic voice prepared hearts to be receptive to Christ's work among them, to be transformed by the power of God. Herein lies hope!Using illustrations from everyday church life and decades of ministry experience, Rohrer carefully crafts a lively and realistic pastoral theology for ministry in the sacred wilderness. If you are a new pastor you have a sure guide here. If you are a veteran preacher you'll find just the refresher course you need to invigorate your ministry.
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He will turn many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. With the spirit and power of Elijah he will go before him, to turn the hearts of parents to their children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.
Luke 1:16-17
Pastor Goes Postal”—I’ve never seen this headline on the front page of a newspaper. Yet it would not surprise me if someday I did. Looking back on my years in pastoral ministry, I can recall times when I am glad I did not have an automatic weapon at my disposal. While I don’t think I was ever angry enough to fire directly at members of the congregation, the thought of shooting out a few windows in the sanctuary in the presence of the gathered congregation has crossed my mind.
What is it about congregations that can arouse such rage in us pastors?
I am still embarrassed as I recall a time about twenty years ago. I was serving a small congregation of older adults in Pasadena, California. It had more than its share of “little old ladies,” even for Pasadena. Many of them were the widows of Presbyterian ministers who lived in one of the denomination’s retirement facilities a mile from the church. One morning, about four years into my tenure there, I can remember feeling stuck. Stuck in this little church. Stuck in a place where it seemed few, if any, appreciated and understood me. Stuck preaching sermons to sleeping deaf people. Stuck in a church set on one of the busiest corners in the San Gabriel Valley, but that still somehow remained strangely invisible to the world around it.
Lost in my sense of injustice about these things, I looked out at the members of the congregation as they arrived for worship. Mavis was the first to come into view. Ninety years old and still able to make it to church, she was hobbling in, assisted by her walker. The expected “pastoral” response to seeing her ought to have been a grateful exclamation: “How wonderful that you were able to come!” However, in this moment she became for me an archetype of all that was making my life miserable. And in that moment, just before I rose to do the call to worship, I imagined myself walking up to her, pushing her down and throwing her walker out into the busy traffic speeding up and down Rosemead Boulevard.
Now, Mavis had never done anything to me. She was a sweet lady. Why in the world would I ever imagine such a thing? Obviously it had nothing to do with Mavis. It had to do with me. I was furious. Enraged by a long list of unmet expectations and unfulfilled dreams. Angry because of all that was not right about my ministry. And that was the problem: it was my ministry. My work there had less to do with God’s work among the congregation than with my own perceptions of who I needed them to be and how they ought to respond to me.
The Narcissist in the Pulpit
It is not fun to wake up to one’s own narcissism. Yet if the truth be told, there is no small supply of it among those of us who are members of this guild of pastoral professionals. What is it about pastoral ministry that attracts narcissists? Or perhaps the question is, what is it about the office that produces them?
I can think of answers to both questions.
Narcissists are attracted to the office because it puts us front and center every week. At the appointed hour we ascend the pulpit and have at least the feigned attention of our congregations for twenty or thirty minutes. It is a heady experience to have the eyes and ears of a congregation fixed on you. And from that pulpit perch, it is not hard to begin to believe that people have come to worship primarily to hear us. So we begin to give them more of what we think they want: more of us—our opinions, our advice, our exhortations, our stories, our wisdom. Tragically, the broad and open space of the kingdom of God is exchanged for the tiny world of the pastor.
Yet the greater tragedy is that congregations seldom complain. And this is how the office nurtures narcissism in its occupants. Why is this? How could a congregation possibly benefit in such an exchange? In a word, congregations can fall into the trap of thinking they need a parson. They need to vicariously live the faith through the lives of God’s man or God’s woman in front of them. The benefit of having a parson is that she can model the faith and so inspire the people of a congregation to take up the discipleship journey.
Yet having a parson live the faith before you can also be little more than a spiritual anesthetic. It’s much less strenuous for members of a congregation to listen to stories of the pastor’s encounters with God than to listen for how God might be speaking directly to them. It’s much safer to listen to the pastor’s expositions of a text than it is to take the risk of entering the strange world of the Bible and exposing oneself to the power of the Word of God. It’s much easier to watch someone walk the way of Christian discipleship than to take the journey oneself.
This is what systems folks refer to as a pathological symbiosis. The two entities, pastor and congregation, sustain their relationship with one another by fueling their respective pathologies. The narcissistic pastor gets his ego massaged under the guise of a selfless and sacrificial “ministry.” And the anesthetized congregation dreams about the spiritual life while altogether avoiding encounter with the living God. Everyone settles into a rather mediocre and painless place. In this environment, there is none of the discomfort that results from being challenged. But neither is anyone hearing or answering the invitation into relationship with the God who “is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine” (Eph 3:20).
If a congregation is in decline, the negative effects of this symbiosis grow worse. The primary mission project of a declining congregation is often the financial support of the pastor. More than once I have witnessed the dynamic of a congregation whose main work is to minister to its pastor. The spiritual myopia produced by this dynamic is stifling to a congregation. In such congregations, members are called on to give sacrificially for the sake of the church. Yet the missional vision that lies at the root of the call is so small that little energy is mustered by it. Furthermore, the few who do rally to this call ultimately find themselves in a place of fatigue, frustration and resentment when they eventually notice how few of their fellow congregants are joining them in their mission.
The pastor who lives within this dynamic doesn’t fare much better, either becoming a sponge who is all too ready to soak up the good will of the “caring” congregation or an angry reformer ready to lash out at people who aren’t doing enough to “turn the church around.” The fuel for both outcomes is narcissism. In the case of the former, the burned-out pastor who has been broken by the stress of the work willingly becomes the congregation’s project. In the case of the latter, the achiever pastor who needs to build a new congregation begins to see the members of his congregation as little more than the workers who need to be mobilized to make this happen. In either case the pastor becomes the center of attention. The illness or vision of the pastor becomes the mission of the church, and neither pastor nor congregation ever make themselves available to the larger work of God.
At best, the parson is one who models Christian discipleship. At worst, he or she becomes captured by a cult of personality and once in this bondage has no choice but to relinquish the prophetic role. Yet it is in this prophetic role that pastors are most likely to be God’s tool in the transformation of people’s lives. It is when pastors see their work in terms of “mak[ing] ready a people prepared for the Lord” that they begin to apprehend the prophetic dimensions of the pastoral calling.
The Prophet in the Desert
As I look at the life and ministry of John the Baptist, I do not see a man who had any energy for maintaining a religious symbiosis between pastor and parishioner. The kingdom was far too big for him to attempt to press it into this small mold. If anyone lived by the maxim “It’s not about you,” it was John the Baptist, who said, “After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.” “He must increase, but I must decrease.” “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord’” (Jn 1:30; 3:30; 1:23).
For John, this work of making ready a people prepared for God took the shape of a classic Old Testament prophet. He exposed the emptiness of the way things were. He pointed out the weaknesses and foibles of the cultural assumptions and religious practices of his day. He called people to turn from these ways and toward God. John gave himself to the work of giving witness to the God who had created humanity for relationship with himself, and he invited his hearers to respond to God’s ever-present invitation to enter into this covenant relationship. In short, John drew people’s attention to the presence of God and trusted that doing so was the most important work he could do.
The New Testament writers clued us in to this when they equated John’s ministry with the words of Isaiah 40. It was John’s role to come alongside his people with the announcement of the good news that God was about to come alongside them. He answered the call to “comfort” God’s people with the disturbing and yet reassuring news that God was coming to dwell with them.
Comfort Through Discomfort
It is in the command to bring comfort (Hebrew: nakhamu; Greek: parakaleite) to the people that we find the stem cell for pastoral work. The sense of this word, variously translated as “comfort” or “consolation,” speaks to the action of coming alongside another for a specific purpose. It is the image of showing up or walking with another to give witness to the truth. It is a word that puts together the actions of proclamation and presence. And in the context of Isaiah 40, and the New Testament quotation of this text, it is a word that is used in conjunction with the task of giving witness to the presence of God.
The comfort the prophet is called to bring people is the news of God’s coming. And in this way, it is news that is not necessarily comfortable. This kind of consolation is not merely about giving aid to another through empathy and compassion. It is not necessarily comfort that is associated with gentleness and patience. It is the consolation of knowing that God is making his way to his people, and when God shows up, one can expect the landscape to change (see Is 40:4). The valleys are lifted and the mountains are leveled. In short, God’s arrival is never without incident. It has massive implications, and if people hear and respond to this word, they find themselves on a brand new road—a road built on the transforming truth that life is about covenant relationship with God.
Like other prophets before him, John the Baptist showed a willingness to shake things up. He spent a good bit of his energy helping people see the vacancy of what they had come to accept as the norm. He told the truth. Doing so got him in trouble with some people, but it also made him wildly popular. Yet in the face of this popularity, John did not build a new movement with himself at its center. Instead he maintained a tenacious dedication to the mission of directing people’s attention to God. Like his prophetic predecessors, he gave himself lavishly to the work of simply calling people to wake up to the power and grace of a covenant-making God.
Cleansing for Renewal and Relationship
John’s particular tool or window into this awakening process centered around the practice of ritual washings or temple purification rites.[1] As the Gospel writers tell us, he came preaching a “baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (Mk 1:4). By inviting people out to the wilderness surrounding the Jordan River, he engaged people in a reflection on their life in God. In effect, he got them to consider the question of whether or not their acts of religious devotion in the temple through various ritual cleansings actually reflected some kind of inner change in their hearts. Like Isaiah’s admonition about religious festivals and Hosea’s message regarding the rites of sacrifice (Is 1:14; Hos 6:6), John’s call was for religious practice to match a corresponding renewal of the heart.
The bottom line of John’s preaching can be summarized in two questions: Are you aware of God’s presence or not? And if you are aware, what difference is this awareness making in the way you are living your life? It was a sort of “put up or shut up” challenge. Marketers of today would have probably advised against it. But oddly, this message made John extremely popular in his day. I would venture to guess that this was true because authenticity sells—then and now. When people come to the end of their rope or hit a dead end, they begin to be open to receive real help. Often this openness begins when people hear someone name their emptiness or identify their inadequacy. The word of comfort is best heard in the wilderness.
Thus the place John chose to deliver his message was as significant as the message itself. “The wilderness,” or “the region around the Jordan” (Lk 3:2, 3) was a place of rededication. It was the place where the accoutrements of religion were stripped away. It was the place of beginnings. The Jordan River was the water through which the Israelites had passed to claim the Promised Land. Through John, it became the frontier over which the people crossed to claim a new life lived in response to the promise and presence of God.
To go out to receive John’s baptism in the wilderness surrounding the Jordan was a way of saying, Let’s go back to the basics. Let’s get to the root of what really matters. Let’s talk about our covenant relationship with God and how that has an impact on the choices we make in all of our relationships every day. Let’s deal with the truth that all the religious washings in the world can’t get at.
People are ready to hear good news when they have faced up to the bad news. For this reason, the voice of God is often easiest to hear in the wildernesses of our lives. We are ready to be encountered by the Other when we’ve had more than enough of ourselves. John’s ministry tapped into this reality and in so doing made people ready for an encounter with God.
Resorting to a Cheap Imitation
In some ways it was nothing more than Old-Time Religion: “The kingdom of God has drawn near, repent and believe the good news.” And perhaps this is what makes us reticent to resort to it as pastors today. In our anxiety about keeping the church going, we do what is supposed to sell. We resort to a kind of biblicized “how-to-ism” that is not all that different from what populates many of the shelves at Barnes and Noble or is broadcast regularly on the Oprah Winfrey Network.
There is usually nothing morally wrong with these messages. In fact, abiding by them can often lead us to a higher quality of life. But they aren’t about God. They don’t direct people’s attention to God. They are about us and how we need to work harder at what will bring health or well-being. When as pastors we make it our primary job to share these formulae with a congregation, we are taking a profound step away from the core truth that ought to fuel our work. Worse, we are setting ourselves up to be the delivery system for saving truth. We make the mistake of believing the lie that our advice is what people need in order to attain success.
It is the work of a prophet to come alongside others and invite them to wake up to the truth that God has come alongside them. Prophets call people to repent: to turn around and see the God who created us for relationship with himself and has been pursuing us since the foundation of the world. This is the consolation that makes a difference in people’s lives. It is the invitation to rest in the ultimate comfort that only God can provide.
Furthermore, proclaiming this consolation makes a difference in the life of the pastor. The anger that is the fruit of our narcissism is allayed when we understand ourselves to be a part of this bigger work. This is primarily because people’s response to us and to our ministry moves out of the forefront of our consciousness. The people to whom we deliver this message of consolation have business to do with God, and whether or not they do it is beyond our control.
The Angry Pastor and the Non-anxious Pastor
Until the sights and sounds of Mavis’s mangled walker came crashing into my imagination, I had no awareness of just how angry I was. About a year before, someone had pointed it out, but at that time I couldn’t see it. I was attending a seminar along with a hundred other pastors that was being offered by the Alban Institute. The subject of our discussions was how family systems theory could be applied to the congregation. On one day, Speed Leas, who was teach...
