Finding Voice

How Theological Field Education Shapes Pastoral Identity

William B. Kincaid

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781621899174
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

In Finding Voice, Kincaid employs an often used but somewhat elusive metaphor, "voice, " as a way of speaking of pastoral identity and contends that a lively, imaginative pastoral voice emerges from a thorough grasp of context, theology, pastoral roles, personal journey, and systemic dynamics. Designed as a text for the field education, contextual education, and supervised ministry experiences of seminary students and others preparing for congregational leadership, Finding Voice examines in depth how people are experiencing each of these constituent parts of pastoral voice at their student ministry sites not only to learn about each of the areas, but also to recognize and understand what is being called forth in the students as they engage these five key experiences and begin to visualize their future ministry. The book further explores the opportunities created when the five aspects of pastoral identity are in conflict with one another. In the absence of any one of these or the imbalance of them, pastoral voice gets skewed, and vibrant, effective ministry is undermined. Finding Voice urges students to begin now, with field education, to engage a practice of ministry that is imaginative, courageous, nimble, and faithful.

1

The Journey toward Voice

Reflections on Saul and David

Ask me whether what I have done is my life.1

—William Stafford

The poet William Stafford writes:

Some time when the river is ice ask me

mistakes I have made. Ask me whether

what I have done is my life. Others

have come in their slow way into

my thought, and some have tried to help

or to hurt: ask me what difference

their strongest love or hate has made.”2

“Ask me,” Stafford says, “Ask me whether what I have done is my life.” These haunting words imply that a person can do many things, and all of them taken together still might not add up to a life. Or they may add up to somebody’s life, but not our own.

The poet reminds us that others have a say in how we understand ourselves. We may get the final word about the shape and character of our lives, if we work hard enough at it, but we arrive at our identity in relationship to other people, places, and events. That experience is frustrating and clarifying, complicating, and transforming. Without engaging that experience it is unlikely we will ever understand our own personal identity or discover our pastoral voice.

Consider how that clarifying experience plays out in the story of Saul and David found in 1 Sam 17:31–40. This account is frequently referenced as the story of David and Goliath, and rightly so. But within that larger narrative is an exchange between David and Saul. This exchange describes the kind of interior sorting out that occurs when a person is held up for public examination.

Every morning and every evening, for forty days, Goliath emerges from his camp and calls out for a worthy opponent. Across the way, fear envelopes Saul and the Israelites. The stakes are high. The losers will become the servants of the winners.

David, to whom we were introduced in 1 Samuel 16 when he worked as a music therapist to ease Saul’s tormented soul, becomes the unlikely opponent for Goliath. David is, after all, a youthful and handsome shepherd boy who is seemingly more comfortable playing his instrument, bearing Saul’s armor, and running errands than engaging in battle.

With the Israelites running for cover in response to Goliath’s thunderous challenge, David announces that the giant’s defiance of the living God will not stand. David then inquires about what gain he might personally realize if he were victorious over Goliath, foreshadowing David’s complex interests and motives.

Certain that the young boy does not have a chance in a fight with Goliath, Saul tries to discourage David. But David replies by building an impromptu resume that cites the lambs that he has rescued and the lions and bears he has killed while working as a shepherd. How much more difficult could fighting Goliath be, he asks, especially because he has the unequivocal promise that God will be with him?

The conversation between Saul and David is brief, but it reveals that David’s identity quest is under way. The four movements of this exchange create a framework for our own personal and pastoral discovery.

Saul Gives His Armor to David

We pass on what is at our disposal. This is what Saul did. “Here, David, take my armor.”

We humans give many things to each other over the course of our lives. This stuff that we give each other—and stuff isn’t a technical term, but in some cases it’s the most polite term—comes in the form of expectations, signals of approval and disapproval, views of the world as being either a safe or hostile place, patterns to follow, prejudices to adopt or reject, possibilities to pursue, woundedness that we want somebody else to feel, lines not to cross, and dreams that can and cannot be considered. Beneficial or harmful, all of this stuff cries out for us to become aware of it and reflect upon it, lest it become a Goliath-like monster that rears its ugly head at the most inopportune times.

Many people give things to their ministers—effusive encouragement, generous support, expectations for the minister and her family, models for ministry, personal issues of their own, or brokenness from church fights that seems to carry no expiration date. Without some careful processing of what is already going on in our lives, pastors may well hand the worst of those things to the people around them in their interactions with the congregation.

Moreover, these gifts may not be as helpful to the receiver as the giver imagines. Pastors and congregations are notorious for making assumptions about each other that dishonor one another and undermine their relationship. These assumptions can be found along a continuum between direct, explicit communications and tacit, insidious equivocations. For example, a congregation might, in effect, say the following to a new pastor:

“Here, Dana, we’ve got this booming pulpit voice left over from our previous pastor. It’s how every great preacher sounds and you can have it! Go ahead, try it out for us.”

Or, “Here, Pat, we’ve got this social gospel theology stored in the recesses of our congregational memory and have been waiting for someone who can dust it off and start injecting it back into all our discussions. Go ahead, this will fit perfectly. We can’t wait to hear it coming out of your mouth!”

Or, “Here, Lindsey, we’ve got the ghost of another minister roaming these halls who thought that the reign of God depended on weekly fellowship dinners and nightly committee meetings. We aren’t sure what you do all week, but we thought you might like to try these ideas on for size. We love a casserole-eating, detail-obsessed pastor and we will love you, too, once you start wearing this particular suit of pastoral priorities.”

Of course, congregations also give gifts of infinite value and deep encouragement to their pastor. People articulate possibilities for a ministry that we, as pastors, may never have thought of or may not have considered doing. Indeed, an individual’s call to ministry often emerges in moments when a congregation entrusts a particular aspect of ministry to that person, and through the experience of performing that ministry that individual’s passions and gifts emerge. Through reflection and, in many cases, the affirmation that follows such an experience may cause that person to take pause and consider exploring the vocation of ministry more fully.

Some gifts that aid in developing our pastoral identity may perplex us when we first receive them. I can recall receiving such a gift when I was in my teenage years. It seemed like a small thing one Sunday when Mrs. Williams, an older woman in my home church, handed me a book her Sunday school class had been studying. “I thought you might be interested in this,” she told me. I thanked her, but I couldn’t imagine why she was giving me that book or what it had to do with my life. Over time I came to realize the gift wasn’t so much the book. In fact, I don’t even remember its title. But I came to see this small gift as being an invitation to think about a life path and, in that regard, this gift had quite a bit to do with my life. Mrs. Williams seemed to be aware of my likely vocational path before I was, and so she invited me to live in its possibility.

Theological field education puts you in a position to start receiving these many gifts—the good, the bad, and the ugly—so that you can begin sorting through them. It’s a gift to be asked to preach on the first Sunday of Advent. It’s also a gift to be given responsibility for the church’s annual health fair and to coordinate ministry with men and women who are homeless. And it is still another gift to be invited to lead a study that encourages people to understand how their faith informs and interprets the rest of their lives. A congregation with capacity and willingness to provide as many of these gifts as possible will greatly benefit your quest for finding your pastoral voice.

David Tries on Saul’s Armor

The second move in this story comes when David did what many of us do when we are given a new thing—he tried it out. David put on Saul’s armor and walked around in it.

In his book Dreams from My Father, then Harvard Law Review president Barack Obama powerfully describes his own challenges of trying to walk around with the gifts he’d been given. His gifts were not just the one personal story he inherited from his birth, but they were a convergence of a complicated set of stories that became even more complicated as he grew up.

Places as varied as Hawaii, Indonesia, Southern California, Chicago, and Kenya influenced Obama’s life trajectory. He was shaped by a diverse group of people—grandparents from the Luo tribe in Kenya on one side of the family and a Kansan grandfather and a Cherokee grandmother of Scottish/English stock on the other. Factors of race, geography, culture, and familial status collided almost daily in Obama’s life.

Obama was born to an American woman and a Kenyan man. His other family members and friends lived around the world and brought into his life an array of expectations, questions, prejudices, and possibilities. Obama describes looking into other people’s lives and their narratives for clues about how his own life might fit together. He reports that on several occasions this approach not only intensified his confusions, but also increased the uncertainty of the people around him who, themselves, were already unclear about how best to relate to him. In one conversation, his friend Ray replies to one of Obama’s comments with the simple line: “Speak for yourself.” Silence ensued as Obama realized that he had no clear idea about who his own self was.3

For four hundred and fifty pages Obama’s book begs the simple question, “Who am I?” In chapter after chapter Obama undertakes an identity quest that winds its way through expectations, disillusionment, questions, surprises, revelations, a...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: The Journey toward Voice: Reflections on Saul and David
• Chapter 2: Understanding Where You Are
• Chapter 3: Connecting with the Greater Faith Story
• Chapter 4: Embracing the Vocation of Pastor
• Chapter 5: Discovering Who You Are as a Person in Ministry
• Chapter 6: Finding Your Place in the System
• Chapter 7: Finding and Embodying Voice
• Chapter 8: Beginning Strong, Finishing Well
• Appendix A: Tools for Contextual Analysis
• Appendix B: Tools for Congregational Study
• Bibliography