The Radical Resurgence

Call it revolution or reformation – the church’s understanding of ministry is changing radically.

Ministry is in crisis today. Seminarians say they don’t feel called to the traditional pastoral role, and young men and women in pastoral service tell me. “I don’t fit here.”  A young man with a M.Div. degree, two years out of seminary, wrote, “My wife and I just don’t feel at home here. We have lots of questions about the traditional pastoral role we’re placed in, and we feel isolated.” He was serving as an assistant pastor, working closely with the senior pastor and with a group of people who know and love the Lord. But he felt something was out of focus and out of gear. He felt he was spinning wheels instead of building community.

This is not an isolated example. Several currents are combining to challenge and undermine the traditional pastoral role.  While most seminaries will operate on a professional school model (the religious counterpart to a legal or medical school), here and there that model is being challenged.  Biblical images of pastors as equippers and disciples are beginning to yeast their way into the church. On the other hand, in many local churches the expectation, both official and unofficial, is that the pastor is the professional religionist, the expert, not the equipper and catalyst.  The pastor is the one who does the religious work for the people, not the one to turns “laymen” into ministers.