The Incarnational Essence of the Pastoral Call

The pastor is the presence of God to his or her people in fleshly form. To many of them, when the pastor shows up it means that God is with them. This is not to say that God was not with them before of course, but the pastor serves as a visible reminder of God’s presence among his people. People need physical reminders that God is present. People need relationships with a pastor because to them (and to God) the pastor is one who provides a physical relationship that is representative of the relationship between God and mankind. It is both over and underestimated the role of the pastor as the representative between God and mankind. It is overestimated when we think that God speaks to people by only the means of the pastor. It is underestimated when we think that God mainly speaks to people individually. Such a view is isolating and individualistic – a concept foreign to the community of the saints. People need to “see” God, particularly in times of tragedy, and the pastor is usually the closest that people come to “seeing” God. The pastor represents the hope and love of God just by his or her own presence during times of uncertainty and tragedy. “One’s being there is in a powerful sense the ‘presence’ of the Church, and of Christ. Why is it so urgently, so pathetically, important that the pastor be there? Because he is the palpable sign of the supportive community and the community’s Lord. Of course Christ has preceded the pastor. Of course, of course. But in such times of crisis these commonplaces are frighteningly distant and abstract. It is the personal character of the Presence in the person of the pastor that is believable and consoling” (Neuhaus 43-4).

An Eschatological Community

It is important for the church to recognize itself as an eschatological community because the church has an eschatological hope. The church exists in the future as well as the present. It is the hope of what the church will be that drives the church in its present work and causes the church to realize that what she will be in the future is something that she can take hold of now in the present time. This is called “living up to what one has already attained,” or “taking hold of what one already owns.” This future hope causes the church to act according to that hope. The church becomes in the present what she believes she will be in the future. If the church believes that she will fade and die out in the end then she is in fact fading and dying now. If the church believes that she will shine and be made new in the end then she is in fact shining and being made new in the present. What we believe ourselves to be in the future is what we become today. This is why dwelling upon the sin of the past is unhealthy, because that assumes that what we were yesterday is what we will always be to a certain extent, and if we believe that then we truly will be all that we dwell upon in the past that we allow to captivate us. We must allow the hope of the future glory to shape us now and so cause the future to become the present. “But it is precisely in speaking of the future that we address the here and now; for the needs and hungers of the moment cannot be understood except by reference to that healing and filling which is the promised future.” (Neuhaus 132).

Christian Counseling

The difference between secular therapies and the Christian care of the pastor is that the secular therapies are based upon expected results which have been determined by observable facts, whereas the Christian care of the pastor is based upon expected results which have been realized through faith in what will be instead of in what has already been observed. While whatever methods have proven to be helpful within the field of psychology ought to be recognized by those in ministry, ultimately the ministry is based upon something that has not been successfully observed through science. There is often a secular set of beliefs behind the secular therapies employed within psychology. An example would be that in much of secular psychology the main goal is to get the patient to be reconciled with his or herself. Within the Christian care of the pastor is seen the central goal of reconciling the person to God. Only when a person is at peace with God will they then be at peace with themselves because the true conflict was one between the person and God. “Psyochotherapy has a great deal to say about the characteristics of thought and behavior but is little concerned with the character of the person. Especially in the more popularized versions of therapy (and that is often the level at which churches and ministers are involved), people are seen as a bundle of needs to be discovered, expressed, examined, and met. Such therapy keeps the person in perpetual dependency as he alternately whines and exults in the exploration of new needs. And it sustains the illusion that such needs are problems to be resolved, problems that can be resolved. In their more fatuous forms, psychotherapies suggest that problems discovered are problems resolved, that self-knowledge is self-healing. Christian faith, too, affirms the axiom, ‘Know thyself.’ But the discovery of our real selves is not through internal probing but external promise; becoming our true selves is not a therapeutic project but a vocation” (Neuhaus 89).

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Source

Richard Neuhaus. Freedom for Ministry: A Guide for the Perplexed Who are Called to Serve. (1992), pp. 89.