Leader or chaplain?

A pastor told me he recently interviewed with a church search committee and asked them if the church was seeking a pastor whose primary responsibility would be in ministering to the current membership or whose primary responsibility would be in leading outreach into the community.  What do you guess the answer was?  If you guessed both you would be exactly right.  That church wants a pastor who will spend most of his or her time serving the current members and who will spend most of his or her time growing the church!  What the church fails to understand is that no pastor can spend most of the time doing both.  It's one or the other.

In my role I work with many pastor search committees helping them identify the qualities they need in their next pastor.  Almost every one of these churches tell me they want a pastor who can lead the church in growth, but the reality is most of these churches are seeking a pastor who will serve as a chaplain to the church family.  Growth is fine as long as it doesn't take away time the pastor spends with the current members.  Such churches really do not want a leader; they want a family priest.

This is very short-sighted on the part of these churches because the church should be the one insitution that exists for its non-members.  The Great Commission doesn't call us to sit around our churches waiting for people to drop in so we can serve them.  It calls us to be out in the world sharing the good news about Jesus Christ.  That is what pastors should be leading their churches to accomplish.  We should gather in churches to celebrate and worship and to be equipped in how we can take the gospel into our world Monday through Saturday.  If these churches are so wrong in what they are seeking in a pastor, why is this so common among many churches?  As Dr. Phil says, we teach people how to treat us.

Churches have been conditioned in the past to expect the pastor to fill the role of a chaplain and to manage the business of the church.  This is the role many seminaries teach their students, and when these students go into the church this is the only role they know how to fill.  Successful pastorates occur when the pastor is instantly available to satisfy every whim of every member of the church.  That's why many board meetings include a report from the pastor about how many times he or she visited church members that month, how many hospital visits were made, and how many boo-boos were kissed.  If the pastor fails to show up in a perceived time of need, the offended party will make sure the entire church knows how the pastor neglected to provide the approriate pastoral care, and such neglect will be duly noted in the minds of the members.

Do pastors have a responsibility to provide pastoral care to the church members?  Of course.  But the pastor also has a responsibility to lead, to cast vision, and to develop relationships with people outside the church.  So what does a pastor do?  Unfortunately, the answer is both.

If the pastor fails to meet the pastoral care expectations of the church he or she will lose credibility with the congregation.  That will make future efforts to introduce changes more difficult.  The pastor needs to serve as a chaplain, attend committee meetings that often produce little of lasting value, and meet the other expectations the church has while casting a vision to the church of a different way of doing ministry.  The church has been conditioned for years to expect traditional pastoral ministry, and it will take several years to help them understand there is a better, more biblical, way for a pastor to serve his or her church.  Perhaps you have been called to your church for such a time as this.