Putting Pastoral Vision Through the Meat Grinder

It is good to pull away for an intense period of theological study and personal reflection.  OR, is it?

A bit more than half way through my second Doctor of Ministry seminar at Beeson Divinity School, I am not sure of the answer  to that.  This much I do know:  I do believe that I will come out a more excellent follower of my Lord on the other side.  But the process of getting there is like going through a meat grinder:  all of my theological parts and my psychological self being processed slowly and intensely by an amazing work of the Holy Spirit.  I hope that I make for some terrific gourmet hamburger when it is all said and done!

This has not been a week of colliding interests for me.  More than a year ago, I tossed aside all of the secular books on leadership that I had ever purchased.  Mark Nysewander, a definate spiritual mentor for me, confirmed my decision to do so and encouraged me, over breakfast at Bob Evan’s one morning, to pursue Biblical leadership at the guidance of the Holy Spirit.  This seminar with Doug Webster has been a further grinding in the same direction for me.

The impetus placed on pastoral visioneering has been much on my mind this week.  The primary role of the pastor is not visioneering.  This is, I realize, tantamount to heresy given today’s business-model approach to Christian leadership. 

The leadership gurus will be quick to quote scripture.  Proverb 29.18 tells us that “where there is no prophetic vision the people cast off restraint” (ESV).  What is forgotten is the next line in the proverb:  “but blessed is he who keeps the law.”  The vision is clearly linked with the law and the law is linked not with modern notions of ecclesiastical success (read church growth here), but with a community that is rooted in keeping God’s law, thus living as a distinct witness to the goodness of God’s “already and yet still to come” kingdom in the midst of a world where cheap imitations of Kingdom goodness seem to abound.  It is interesting that the English Standard Version emphasizes “prophetic vision”.  Are not the prophetic visions of scripture calls for the people of Israel to again make themselves distinct from the rest of the world by their loving fidelity to God’s word, consequently becoming a light to the Gentiles?

There is Sinai.  Moses came down with the tablets revealing the law and God’s vision for a set-apart community of people who would be a light to the surrounding people.  Can the Pastor improve on that vision?  Is there a vision more unique than that vision?  Is any local church to have a vision distinct from the vision given to Israel?  If we learn the secular techniques, then practice them and emerge from our “mountains” with our own unique vision, are we any different than the community of God fashioning their golden calf and serving their own vision at Sinai’s feet?  Do we then serve a vision not really so unique or Kingdom-oriented because it is so similar to the visions of our pagan neighbors (read Fortune 500 companies, here)?

There are other Old Testament mountains where God makes his vision clear:  Moriah, Carmel, and Horeb, to name a few.  There are visionary mounts in the New Testament, too:  the mountain of the Sermon and the mountain of transfiguration, for example.  But for brevity sake, I will mention two others here.

There is the Mount of Golgotha where Jesus said that “it (think your sin met by his redemption) is finished”, done, made complete (John 19.28).  As a pastor, it is not my goal to take people to some visionary mountain where they achieve a success that looks like the success lauded by the world.  Rather, I want people to go with me to Golgotha to hear Jesus speaking redemption words over them and to wrestle with a vision of a suffering God, suffering for my sins and calling me to also suffer for the sake of his glory and his creation.

There is the nameless mount in Galilee where Jesus appears in his resurrection power to his disiples and casts this vision:  “Go, therefore, and make disciples”.  Can any statement I engineer take the place of this vision?  Can I hope to improve on the motivational power of the resurrection words of Jesus for his followers?  If I try to improve upon this vision or engineer it more specifically for a particular community, can it retain its globe-encompassing mission, or its situation specific implications for individual believers?

My answer to all of these questions is a resounding ”no”.  I have no mountains of my own from which to emerge with a grand vision for Great Commission Fellowship.  I have no grand visions – at least none that I will allow to masquerade in the place of God’s visions for his people.  But I would be glad to go with you to the Lord’s Mountains and refresh ourselves in the grandeur of these visions of the Most High!

Will we perish without such a church-specific vision cast with the fervor of a motivational guru in an infomercial?  The Proverb is instructive:  blessed are those who keep the law!