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Pastoring God's People
For all those who have been commissioned to pastoral roles of all kinds.

 

Catching a Vision and Passing It On

By Keith Harder

The “missional church” vision promoted by denominational leaders these days has generated a wide variety of responses among Mennonite pastors. It has renewed and energized many. Others hear it calling for more activity when they already feel overloaded, or they fear it devalues what they are already doing.

For me, it reflects the impulse and passion that drew me to pastoral ministry in the first place. I was drawn by the call to participate in the proclamation and expression of God’s purposes for the world. The missional church vision has become another signpost on that same journey—not a destination or a program, but a reminder of my calling. In that light, I offer a few thoughts on how that vision can actually strengthen our pastoral callings.

The place of the pastor in shaping a vision
In a recent issue of the Parish Paper, Lyle Schaller highlighted the critical importance of the pastor in churches whose membership is growing. “Their pastors and lay leaders want them to grow,” Schaller says. They “understand what causes growth … and [they] persistently apply their how-to-do-it knowledge.” Jim Schrag, Executive Secretary of Mennonite Church USA, said something similar when he noted that pastors are “the most influential leaders in the church.”

Some pastors have a hard time identifying with those claims. Either they don’t feel they are the most influential or they reject in principle the idea that they should be the most influential. The mantle of “most influential person in the church” may have negative associations with authoritarian control. As a result, many pastors accept less authority than their congregations want to give them.

At the same time, some congregations wrongly expect their pastors to carry most of the mission and ministry of the church, and some pastors have wrongly taken on too much responsibility. This misplaced responsibility for the mission of the congregation sometimes makes the pastor a target for the congregation’s disappointment if it does not experience numerical growth.

What can we pastors do to help our congregations embrace a missional future?
1. We can embrace our call to leadership. Implementing the missional church vision will require systemic change in most of our congregations, and the required changes may not happen if pastors are not willing to be catalysts for change. I recommend three resources that help us think about leadership and change. Growing in Authority and Relinquishing Control by Celia Hahn is an excellent book for those who see servant leadership as conflicting with a role as “the most influential person.” Hahn contends that authoritative leadership is not the same as authoritarian control. Hahn describes ways of leading and exercising authority without controlling people or outcomes.

Leading Change by John Kotter and Leadership without Easy Answers by Ronald Hiefetz provide helpful insights and practical tools in leading for systemic change. Kotter and Hiefetz highlight the role of leadership in mobilizing organizational resources that will result in long-lasting changes in the culture of an organization—changes that will outlast the leader.

2. We can give more time and attention to seeking what God wants. The missional church vision challenges us to make the purposes of God central in our lives and in the congregations we have been called to serve. In prayer, we can ask: How can we become more fully aligned with God’s purposes and activity in the world? What in our ministries and our congregations reflect God’s purposes? What is marginal to God’s will, or even contradicts it? We could go on a retreat alone or with others to explore these themes. We could also focus on these questions at meetings of deacons, elders, and other congregational leaders.

3. We can view everything about our congregations and everything we do as pastors from a missional perspective. I believe God wants our congregations to reflect God’s purposes in everything they do. It is not only what we do beyond the congregation that makes us missional. Healthy, vibrant, welcoming congregations are missional in their very character. Jesus said our love for each other (John 13) and our unity (John 17) will draw people to God. When the “dividing walls of hostility” (Ephesians 2) are broken down, the purposes of God are fulfilled. We should expect that the world will be drawn to God through the life of the church.

4. We can find ways to connect with those who are not part of the church. As a pastor I had to watch that I was not only relating to church people. A local coffee shop was a place where I interacted with people not in the church. I recall that during the first Gulf War in 1991 it was important for me to interact with people who took a very different view toward war. It was good for me to let them challenge my view, but also to find ways to challenge them in ways that they could hear.

5. We can equip others for ministry. Equipping others for ministry (Ephesians 4) is not engaging others to help pastors with the church’s ministry. Rather, pastors are called “to equip the saints” for their ministries and then get out of their way. Pastors are also in a good position to help others recognize their gifts through personal conversation, group discernment, and preaching. Meetings of elders, deacons, and other congregational leaders also provide golden opportunities for teaching about some aspect of ministry. As a pastor, it was always a temptation for me to rush into the pressing agenda at meetings rather than use these as occasions to help lay leaders be better equipped for their ministry.


How does a missional church vision affect our understanding and practice of pastoral ministry?
Becoming a pastor shaped by the missional vision does not mean being involved in more activities than before. Rather, it is likely to mean re-prioritizing and re-orienting what we do now. One pastor in my community helped his large, well-established congregation accept that he needs to spend more time building relationships with prospective members of the church and less time visiting long-time members. Another pastor asked that she be less involved in administration so that she could spend more time in prayer and Scripture study, thus attending more to God’s purposes and activity in the world.

Re-orienting our approach to pastoral ministry could also mean greater differentiation in the roles many congregations have assigned to the pastor. The generalist approach to pastoral ministry may have served many congregations well, but a missional church will likely mean greater specialization within pastoral roles.

Alan Roxburgh in The Missionary Congregation, Leadership and Liminality says that in a missional congregation the pastoral function needs to incorporate poets, prophets, and apostles.

Aligning ourselves with God’s purpose will change us. It will mean making room in our hearts and our churches for new people. It will mean challenging harmful forces that threaten to sidetrack us. It will mean that we imagine how God wants to use the church in our time. It may even change our understanding and practice of pastoral ministry.

—Keith Harder is Co-director of the Office of Ministerial Leadership for Mennonite Church USA.

© 2007 Mennonite Publishing Network