On Organ Grinders and Monkeys
August 30, 2010
A good point, Justin, which has been made to me in a few emails I've received this morning. I would respond as follows:
1. The pastor is the full time person and therefore the buck stops with him. Elders have duties too, of course, but most of us are occupied with our earthly callings until early evening five days a week. For the pastor, the congregation is his calling. Thus, the specific situation to which I referred could indeed have marked a breakdown in eldership as well as full-time pastoral leadership. The specific incident was not, however, the proof of any case I was trying to make, merely the trigger for the subsequent three reflections: 1. pastors should know their people; 2. real pastoral success should not be equated with increasing distance between pastor and people as the pastor becomes a superstar; and 3. pastors need to have time to listen to their people.
2. Yes, there often can be a desire on the part of members to speak only to the pastor, not an elder. As we say in the UK: we all prefer to speak to the organ grinder, not to his monkey. To avoid this, or to cure it, a proper culture of elder visitation needs to be in place so that people know who their elder is. I suspect the organ grinder problem is in part the result of people knowing who the pastor is -- he's the guy up front who preaches every Sunday -- while being relatively ignorant of their elders. So yes, I acknowledge this as a possibility in the specific scenario I cited. but, as you will see below, i still do not think this exempts the pastor from knowing his people in a concrete, individual way.
What strikes me as interesting in the New Testament is the intimate knowledge Paul has of the various congregations to which he writes. He is well informed about the contexts, personalities and incidents in these churches, and he assumes that the leadership who receive his letters will know of whom and of what he speaks, and will thus be able to act. Now, in the churches in which I have been a member I knew some elders better than others; but my basic point is not that one man should do everything -- far from it, for I am committed to the plurality of elders -- but that the pastor should know all of his congregation personally at some level. That's an important part of his job and is, I believe, presupposed in Paul's teaching and modeling of the pastor's role, given that his letters are shot through with references to specific people and personal issues.
For example, when I meet with my brothers on session and we talk about difficult pastoral cases, some inevitably have more intimate knowledge of the specific people and situations than others; but we all know something of the people we are discussing, we all have some personal knowledge of them as individuals. Now, we are very, very far from being a perfect pastoral church; but we are a manageable size and it is reasonable for the membership to expect the elders to know them all by name; they are not just numbers on a page; thus, none of us elders should ever be dealing with a problem in the abstract. And that is crucially important.
Further, though it may well be that all of us except for the pastor are unavailable to take that urgent call during the hours of daylight Monday to Friday, the important point is that the pastor is there. That's where his priorities lie. And that's the kind of pastor who needs to be the aspirational norm for students leaving seminary and going into the ministry. Just knowing your people by name and caring for them as individuals as you faithfully minister to them week by week: that may represent terrible lack of ambition in a wider secular culture where big is best, and fame is always the spur; but, by the logic of the cross, what the world deems lack of ambition could well be the greatest ambition to which anyone can aspire.
1. The pastor is the full time person and therefore the buck stops with him. Elders have duties too, of course, but most of us are occupied with our earthly callings until early evening five days a week. For the pastor, the congregation is his calling. Thus, the specific situation to which I referred could indeed have marked a breakdown in eldership as well as full-time pastoral leadership. The specific incident was not, however, the proof of any case I was trying to make, merely the trigger for the subsequent three reflections: 1. pastors should know their people; 2. real pastoral success should not be equated with increasing distance between pastor and people as the pastor becomes a superstar; and 3. pastors need to have time to listen to their people.
2. Yes, there often can be a desire on the part of members to speak only to the pastor, not an elder. As we say in the UK: we all prefer to speak to the organ grinder, not to his monkey. To avoid this, or to cure it, a proper culture of elder visitation needs to be in place so that people know who their elder is. I suspect the organ grinder problem is in part the result of people knowing who the pastor is -- he's the guy up front who preaches every Sunday -- while being relatively ignorant of their elders. So yes, I acknowledge this as a possibility in the specific scenario I cited. but, as you will see below, i still do not think this exempts the pastor from knowing his people in a concrete, individual way.
What strikes me as interesting in the New Testament is the intimate knowledge Paul has of the various congregations to which he writes. He is well informed about the contexts, personalities and incidents in these churches, and he assumes that the leadership who receive his letters will know of whom and of what he speaks, and will thus be able to act. Now, in the churches in which I have been a member I knew some elders better than others; but my basic point is not that one man should do everything -- far from it, for I am committed to the plurality of elders -- but that the pastor should know all of his congregation personally at some level. That's an important part of his job and is, I believe, presupposed in Paul's teaching and modeling of the pastor's role, given that his letters are shot through with references to specific people and personal issues.
For example, when I meet with my brothers on session and we talk about difficult pastoral cases, some inevitably have more intimate knowledge of the specific people and situations than others; but we all know something of the people we are discussing, we all have some personal knowledge of them as individuals. Now, we are very, very far from being a perfect pastoral church; but we are a manageable size and it is reasonable for the membership to expect the elders to know them all by name; they are not just numbers on a page; thus, none of us elders should ever be dealing with a problem in the abstract. And that is crucially important.
Further, though it may well be that all of us except for the pastor are unavailable to take that urgent call during the hours of daylight Monday to Friday, the important point is that the pastor is there. That's where his priorities lie. And that's the kind of pastor who needs to be the aspirational norm for students leaving seminary and going into the ministry. Just knowing your people by name and caring for them as individuals as you faithfully minister to them week by week: that may represent terrible lack of ambition in a wider secular culture where big is best, and fame is always the spur; but, by the logic of the cross, what the world deems lack of ambition could well be the greatest ambition to which anyone can aspire.
