I want my ministry to be marked by three guiding principles:
Apostolic Focus, Prophetic Passion, and Pastoral Care. I’ve already written about an Apostolic Focus — the idea that we’re always training and sending people to be a manifestation of the Kingdom. I talked about my Prophetic Passion — the idea that discontent with the status quo moves us to declare in word and deed the truth of the Kingdom. Today I’m going to talk about Pastoral Care.
Apostolic Focus, Prophetic Passion, and Pastoral Care. I’ve already written about an Apostolic Focus — the idea that we’re always training and sending people to be a manifestation of the Kingdom. I talked about my Prophetic Passion — the idea that discontent with the status quo moves us to declare in word and deed the truth of the Kingdom. Today I’m going to talk about Pastoral Care.
I’ve known for a while that I have a strong pastoral gifting. When I started to consider what the core values of my ministry are to be, I knew that something in line with my pastoral gifting would have to be one of them. As I’ve talked to you about how I view “Apostolic Focus” and “Prophetic Passion“, I’ve been thinking about how I could talk about “Pastoral Care”.
I figured I would end up saying something about how relationship is important and how Jesus stopped to look at and care for the whole person. But that doesn’t seem all that challenging. It’s not new. There’s no edge. And while I try not to get too caught up in wanting to be original, I just kept thinking, “Surely this concept that helps to define the depths of who I am can’t be that simple, that blase.”
Then I read this in Thomas Merton’s Life and Holiness:
If we are to be ‘perfect’ as Christ is perfect, we must strive to be as perfectly human as he, in order that he may unite us with his divine being and share with us his sonship of the heavenly Father. Hence sanctity is not a matter of being less human, but more human than other men. This implies a greater capacity for concern, for suffering, for understanding, for sympathy, and also for humor, for joy, for appreciation of the good and beautiful things of life. It follows that a pretended ‘way of perfection’ that simply destroys or frustrates human values precisely because they are human, and in order to set oneself apart from the rest of men as an object of wonder, is doomed to be nothing but a caricature. And such caricaturing of sanctity is indeed a sin against faith in the Incarnation. It shows contempt for the humanity for which Christ did not hesitate to die on the cross.
I want to be a person who cares like Merton describes. I also want to be a person that helps to develop others into people who have a capacity to care like Merton describes. I want people to understand that growing into their human identity is part of what God intended for them.
So I care for the person — I counsel and pastor, I encourage and challenge, I listen and I speak to the heart — because the person is precisely who God has called. When we try to detach ourselves from that part of us that is human, we lose the ability to be fully who God called us to be in this world.
The Kingdom will look like people living fully as who God created them to be. You being who God called you to be is you being fully yourself.
We were designed to hurt and the Lord knew we would be tempted. Pain, temptation, carnal desire — none of those things disqualifies us from holiness, from a life as the manifestation of God’s Kingdom.
So I add “Pastoral Care” to my first two core ministerial principles of “Apostolic Focus” and “Prophetic Passion”; because if we are to effectively train and send people into the world, and if we want people to identify with the brokenness of this world and to do something about it; we must first develop the person. If we allow people simply to hang out in “Apostolic Focus” and “Prophetic Passion”, then we may end up placing a focus on sending people out or being aware of the Kingdom reality, before we place a focus on developing people. Without people we have nothing.
So I want to be involved in ministry that is marked by sending people into the world to be a manifestation of God’s Kingdom, rather than about training people to build my own Kingdom.
I want to be involved in ministry that is marked by an identification with the brokenness of our world that drives to a passion to declare and make a change, rather than a settling for the status quo.
And finally I want to be involved in ministry that is marked by developing people into the fullness of their human identity that they might be the people God has called them to be, rather than encouraging people to detach from their humanity to reach some level of saintly holiness.
