Traditional Pastoral and Missional Ministries - Essay Example

Modern life is a thing which changes very quickly affecting by this change all the spheres of activity of human beings. The changes which the life has in store affect humans both positively and negatively, and they may be so sharp and radical that they completely modify the traditional and usual image of the things that it is sometimes thought that the changes were hidden and took no time at all. The process of changes and modification did not leave uncovered such a peculiar and delicate sphere of human life as church and religious tradition, the sphere which is considered to be the most resistant to any deviations from its traditions. Taking this into consideration, it is necessary to recognize that today these traditions experience considerable rethinking which, in its turn, introduces innovations and the things not known before. Considering the topic of changes of modern religious tradition, the first thing to focus on is not amendment of the processes and rituals conducted by the priests and other clergymen, but the trend of development of a missional ministry which is supposed to be an alternative and even an opposition to the traditional pastoral ministry model. As any phenomenon or event of human life, both approaches have their positive and negative effects, and this paper will consider them. The traditional pastoral approach to the ministry activity is a thing which is supported by people who are inclined to sympathize to conservatism and who are unwilling to change the clergy activity which was given to a man to worship and believe. Such people may suppose that that “…their customs, beliefs, and traditions [are] being threatened by the … change … brought to the church…” 1 For such people the most obvious advantage of this model is its being traditional and unchanged because people, according to their beliefs, cannot modify what has been given to them from the heaven. They also find it relevant to the Bible testament of the pastor’s role as a shepherd who looks after the sheep he is responsible for, and taking care of people who come to the church to experience pastoral counseling means fulfillment and observation of the original intentions of the religious tradition.2 As “the church is called to care for persons in need.”, this approach is the one most common referred to when this help is needed.3 Another advantage is determined by the realization of giving pastoral care. As the pastor performs the role of the counselor, he is able to pay maximum attention to the person who needs his assistance, and, dependently on his time, he can provide the person in need with the necessary and relevant help. The benefit here is that the pastor as a clergyman and as a shepherd seldom uses severe criticism as a means of help providing, which promotes the help seekers to reveal the essence of the problem to full extent and without any fear of being negatively accepted. This is similar to a psychological phenomenon of a client-centered therapy when a person is accepted without any prejudice and negative assumptions which facilitates better problem revealing, detecting and treatment.4 As this technique has become the most popular and its efficiency has been proved to be very high, this similarity of the pastoral care is definitely a beneficial advantage of a traditional approach to the problem discussed. The advantage of traditional pastoral ministry is also seen in the field of organization of the work of the church. When a pastor is the one person responsible for governing and management of the work of the church and its structures and other clergymen, he is able to perform his organizational work automatically and to full extent because he does not have to share ti with other people and to combine the results of work of different persons later on. As most of the pastors are experienced enough and have many years of experience in this sphere, the process becomes less time consuming and allows for focusing on other issues and promotes correct time and efforts distribution. The thing that is also definitely advantageous is the pastor’s way of delivering the messages of the religious sources. The tradition is that the sermons and prayers are conducted and guided by one person, and the role of pastor meets this requirement very well. “In good conscience, I believed my position to be that of the gospel”.5 This phrase of Romero Feast, who is a clergyman himself, perfectly conveys the idea in which way the traditional rituals shall be conducted. When the pastor is in the centre of the religious ceremonies, this coincides with the image of the church which already exists within minds of most people and they accept both the information and the way it is conducted and do not feel uncomfortable about what happens around them. The advantage which is provided by such way of clergy events conduction is the worshippers’ feeling conscious about the original traditions and attempts to preserve the connection of the present moment of religion development with the past one, that is, the religion’s initial appearance and content. The benefits of traditional pastoral approach do not limit themselves to the church and the things related to it only. Gordon E. Dames reasonably admits that the church addresses very serious existential problems, such as substance use and abuse, violence, oppression and poverty, and it can also be a link between the environment, the human beings and, finally, the God.6 From this point of view, pastoral ministry enforces addressing and action-reaction activity to the current problems of the society and covers the groups of risk. The work which is done in this regard deals also with the ethical aspect of the actual problems mentioned, and this is the thing which is also related to the ideas of the church in terms of adversely affecting things that spoil human life.7 The pastoral ministry also enforces formulation of piety of an individual which is also very important in religious sense from the traditional point of view, as the church must support this piety as the necessary element of religious process and tradition. 8 The disadvantage of the pastoral ministry is its excessive basis on traditions, to be more precise, the results of such traditionalism. As the supporters of this approach are focused on original religious canons, they are very unlikely to accept innovations as they consider religion as not the sphere where any amendments may be introduced. This may be a ground for conflicts with the supporters of the opposite opinion which contributes to division of people, and such division is especially negative in religious society. There also may be such phenomenon as “…a tendency to pour “cold water” on the dreams of the youth, particularly of youthful pastors.”9 As the main part of the conservative society of worshippers is made up of older people, they often tend to criticize any deviations which the young pastors may assume, even occasionally, and this, as any criticism, is not in the church canon. The missional ministry is the second way of ministering, and it also has many supporters. They consider that the traditional customs and rituals, as the way of action, essence and organization of the church, have become old-fashioned and distorted and that something new must be introduced or even some rethinking is highly recommended. They believe that the church is something bigger than just a building to visit and actions to repeat, but a place and phenomenon which helps people to gain spiritual and soul comfort. The best description of what a missional church is has been given by Dan Kimball: “…a body of people sent on a mission who gather in community for worship, encouragement, and teaching from the Word that supplements what they are feeding themselves throughout the week.” 10 The advantage of missional ministry, according to such definition of a missional phenomenon, is that its representatives dare to rethink and reconsider the idea of a church as of an institution and the part of society’s life. “The church should stop mimicking the surrounding culture and become an alternative community, with a different set of beliefs, values and behaviors.” 11 It is possible to suppose that the missional approach emerged as a response to the changes that the life managed to impose on the church, and that its mission is justified by the desire to bring the church back to its spiritual essence, which itself is a very good idea and can potentially bring significant benefits in this regard. Another thing that contributes to the new ideas introduced by the missional ministry approach is that the missional church is focused on a community of people which coincides with the Christian creed of mutual help and assistance. This makes people closer to each other and promotes their live communication and time spending, and everyone can be responsible for the organization of the work of the church. This makes people confident of the results of their work and makes them feel responsibility for promoting good deeds which is also one of the aspects of the Christian tradition. The ministers who perform this role within the course of missional approach usually act collectively, and this promotes generation of new and interesting ideas how to improve time spending and traditions worshipping in the church religious process. Their communication in terms of developing these ideas is a collective thinking which is very effective in terms of output results. David Putman and Ed Stetzer reasonably admit benefits of such thinking in their “Breaking the Missional Code”: the programs are changed by the processes; the models are changed by the missions; the uniformity is changed by the diversity; the monuments are changed by the movements, that is, the focus is made on lively things that are very close to the humanity and personality development and spiritual enrichment.12 “Often, along with exhortation there is a heavy reliance on guilt to motivate behavior change”. 13 The missional church does not rely on guilt as a means of personal motivation as it makes people uncomfortable when they recognize their being guilty, even though this guilt is proved, it is hard to accept it. This approach is changed by welcoming to sympathizing to be open to meet the new things, such as cultural traditions of other people. The progressive thinking in this regard also deals with extension of a definition of what it means to be a good person. Today this concept, together with being a good member of the family and a diligent member of a society, has been complemented by such innovative elements as being really free and authentic and self-created along with making the surrounding as safe as it must be for every person. 14 The missional ministry also creates conditions in which the church is multi-voiced and where “…men and women, young and old, educated and illiterate, rich and poor find their voices and discover their vocations”. 15 The advantageous thing about the missionary ministry, according to the proclamation of its supporters, is “being closer to God today than yesterday”.16 The real state of affairs, however, is often referred to as negative effect which is reached by application of too many innovations. According to the opinion of the majority of people, the church should preserve its initial image and traditions, and this is missional approach that distorts the church and does the things that are not allowed for ordinary people. This is partially right, but this is also a very subjective judgment and is probably a result of intolerance of the other opinions and different things that the traditional ones. The same situation is with the perception of the missional approach with a sect element: people tend to think so just because they do not consider this phenomenon deeper that the superficial imaginations about it. Taking the above said into consideration, it is necessary to admit that the dilemma of a religious tradition today is whether the church shall remain traditional with its pastoral model of ministering or it should accept and introduce innovations brought by the missional ministry approach. Both opinions have their advantages and disadvantages, and this is the matter where it is difficult to define the best one: conservative approach is similarly the one preserving initial design and canon of the religious tradition, whereas the new ideas tend to reconsider the image of a modern church and impart more spiritual characteristics to it. Reference List Cooper, M. “Person-Centered Therapy: The Growing Edge”. Therapy Today, Vol. 18, Issue 6, 2007. Dames, G. “The Dilemma of Traditional and 21st Century Pastoral Ministry: Ministering to Families and Communities Faced with Socio-economic Pathologies”. HTS Theological Studies, Vol. 66, No. 2, 2010. Farley, G. “Some Reflections on Certain Advantages of Being a Smaller Membership Rural Church”. Center for Rural Church Leadership, 2001. Feast, R. “The Church, The Body of Christ in History”. Second Pastoral Letter of Archbishop Romero Feast of the Transfiguration, 1977. Horrox, D. “The 'Missional Church': A Model for Canadian Churches?”. The Presbyterian Church in Canada, 2012. Johnson, E. “Making Changes in Churches – Exodus 32: A Word for New Pastors”. The African American Lectionary, 2012. Kelcourse, F. “Pastoral Counseling in the Life of Church”. Encounter, Vol. 63, No. 1-2, 2002. Keller, T. “The Missional Church”. Redeemer City to City, 2009. Kimball, D. “The Emerging Church”. Zondervan, 2003. Stetzer, E., Putman. “Breaking the Missional Code”. Broadman and Holman, 2006. Rowdon, H. “Church Leader’s Handbook”. Paternoster Press, 2009. Williams, S. and S. “Multi-Voiced Church”. Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2012. Yarger, M. “Leading the Transition from a Traditional Attraction Based Ministry Model to a Missional Model of Ministry”. Winebrenner Theological Seminary, 2013. Read More