What makes a pastor a pastor?

Some thoughts on pastoral formation...

Over the past several years, my denomination has been talking a lot about pastoral formation and how that can and should be done.

In my denomination’s conversations about pastoral formation, it seems that the disagreements largely arise from emphasis. Some people emphasize certain pieces of the formation process. Others emphasize other things.

So recently, I’ve been reflecting a lot on the question: What makes a pastor a pastor? In my wondering, I would like to suggest that we are perhaps neglecting one key piece of the formation process. But, let’s talk broadly about what makes a pastor a pastor.

There are of course a wide variety of people and experiences that have prepared and formed me into the pastor I am.

My upbringing in the church. The elderly woman who told me (at all of 5 years old) that I should be a pastor. My parents. My grandparents, especially my grandma, Marian. My Godparents. My Sunday school teachers. The pastors I had (both for positive and negative reasons). My friends and classmates in college. My professors (Stohlmann, Speer, Lumpp, Reineck, Carter, Ibrahim Devries, Schuler, Bransford, Mennicke, Bredehoft, and Trapp). Attending chapel. Trips I got to take to India, Thailand, and Peru. My older brother becoming a pastor. Opportunities I had to lead (and mess up) with college organizations like Fish and Fellowship of Christian Athletes. Talks with Evan and Renato in cross country (where I could barely keep up and was always out of breath). Opportunities to speak in chapel. Invitations to speak at youth groups and high schools. Working for three years in campus ministry. My colleagues (Holst, Hoff, Arnold, Dorner, Press, and Schultz). My wife. Experiencing living in Ankara. The hospitality of Turkish people. Teaching for two years. Suffering. Moving to Frankfurt. Experiencing a truly international church community. My third-culture-kid youth group and Sunday school kids. Jeni and Kristen. Brent and Bob.

The Holy Spirit was working through all of these experiences and people (and many more) before I began even seminary. And every pastor has a similar list.

In the seminary years, the Holy Spirit continued working through friends, professors, mentors, suffering, lots of reading, lots of writing, and a bit more on-hands experience.

Then, I was called, awarded a degree, certified, ordained, and installed as pastor of a congregation.

And then, people started calling me pastor.

Pastor is a relational word.

One of the jokes nearly every pastor will tell at some point or another is this: They didn’t teach us that at seminary.

No matter how robust the training is, it cannot prepare you for everything a pastor will encounter in the parish.

Some things have to be taught by God’s people and the Holy Spirit in the school of experience. My congregation has taught and continues to teach me how to be a pastor far more than anything else in the list above.

And herein lies the answer that I think is being neglected by my denomination.

It is God’s gathered people who make a pastor a pastor. It is God’s people who call. God’s people who teach all those things seminary cannot and does not. Pastors exist because of their relationship to God’s people. A pastor without God’s people is not a pastor.

There’s a book by Bo Giertz, a Swedish pastor, called The Hammer of God. It’s a collection of stories about a young pastor learning through lots of mistakes. One line I always remember is this: “The congregation is the best teacher a pastor can have.”

There are many things that form each pastor. But in the end, God and God’s gathered people are the two most vital pieces to pastoral formation.

The other pieces are all well and good. But I think we have overemphasized some of them. And we have definitely underemphasized the congregation’s role in what makes a pastor a pastor.

If we were to recalibrate, re-emphasize, how might our formation process look different?

I’m curious.

Andy