One of the great joys in reading Craig Barnes’ The Pastor As Minor Poet, is a reclamation of my vocation. I became a pastor because it was the closest things I could find to combining my interests. I studied poetry in undergrad, theology in graduate school, I have been a musician, I enjoy hospitality and community building, and these all manifest themselves in the pastorate. Barnes’ image of the pastor-poet reclaims for me a combination of these interests. It combats my trend towards executive-administrator.
Recently I have been daydreaming about what a different pastoral calling would look like. Not in a wanderlust sense at all. If anything, I probably idolize our current community too much. There is no temptation to flee. Instead, I recall portraits of Catholic priests in literature and film. It seems we always find them pacing the sanctuary, completely interruptible. A parishioner wanders in, the priest sits one row in front of his guest. He drapes an elbow on the back of the pew offering an ear to the only other soul in a hallowed house of God. In these scenes there is poetry, hospitality, and community. I endeavor to accomplish these, but struggle. With no sanctuary pews, no office couch, and a pile of spreadsheets, calendars, and tasks, I find myself inhospitable.
What is missing in the priest scenes is that someone has to sweep that sanctuary. Someone must pay the electric bill and order the candles. For the person to have found the parish, perhaps a website exists. I like to do these things. I like to serve my community by oiling the gears of the church’s engine. I enjoy nailing together the trellis on which the vines of community grow. But they have consumed me.
My resistance to self-care, my cynicism about the extraordinary nature of pastoral work, have led me to value the practical, the measurable. Instead of imagination I seek order. Instead of curiosity, I pursue policy. And people demand it in a sense. I want people to be happy and if they are unsatisfied with an indefinite small group, an unarticulated reason behind childcare, I feel an addictive urge to speak back with both volume and precision. I think our church is thriving because we took seriously the work of stewarding our money with intention. I think having a calendar allows us to flow through seasons of ministry without looking chaotic to the newcomer. I am proud of this work, but it is not missionary in its nature. These are the acts of caring for the soil, but they are not the harvest.
I actually think it is really important for churches to have pastors doing the administrative work. Were it given to an unordained administrator or a volunteer, it becomes even easier to make the tilling an end instead of a means. The good souls tasked with clearing the garden bed would do their best work, but they would probably do such a good job that no one would ever stop to see if the field was seeded. The calendars, spreadsheets, newsletters are tidy, but are the wayfaring finding the gate of Christ? This is how so many churches operate. Good people make meticulous calendars, detailed spreadsheets, tidy member rolls, and precise budgets, but these are abstracted from the ministers.
I live in a conflicted space. It is good for me to see the field, till it, prepare it. But I need to do a better job of letting it go a little. I need to play with it more. The danger is to till it beyond health. It becomes so turned over nothing can grow there.
Okay, I have belabored the agrarian analogy long enough. My calling is to be a pastor-poet, interpreting the word of God into the lives of Winston-Salem. This might involve some organizing, but I cannot let that own me. There is bigger work as Barnes puts it
One of the reasons that people need pastors is precisely because God is always present but usually not apparent. It takes a poet to find that presence beneath the layers of strategy for coping with the feeling of its absence.
I am not an executive, an administrator, a president, politician, or chairman. I am a pastor-poet called to shepherd a flock of Americans trying to cope with a severe modernity that wants to obscure the gentle Christ.
austin pfeiffer 