Pastoral Theology in the Baptist Tradition by R. Robert Creech

Author:R. Robert Creech
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Pastoral Theology;Pastoral theology—Baptists;REL074000;REL108000;REL073000
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2021-09-22T00:00:00+00:00

Theological Reflection

A biblical sense of “sentness” accompanies the call to ministry that leads to becoming a pastor. A pastor’s work entails personally sharing the good news of Jesus Christ with those who do not yet know him and equipping the congregation to do the same.

Pastor as Cultural Anthropologist

Pastoral ministry is inherently contextual. It takes place in a specific location, amid a particular culture, among people who speak a certain language and share common values and practices. As one whom God sent to this place, the pastor seeks to understand the culture of the world where they intend to bear witness. Part of comprehending the culture is to be like the two hundred chiefs of Issachar under David, “who understood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron. 12:32 NIV). The age in which we live, not just the place, is also the context to which God has sent us.

James McClendon’s volume on Christian witness explores the church’s relationship to the world, calling his effort a “theology of culture.”43 We understand that “missionaries” sent to some distant destination must learn the language, customs, beliefs, and traditions of those they go to serve. Over the past half century, changes in Western society have required the same kind of devotion to understanding the culture in which we minister. The church in the West can no longer assume even a basic understanding of the Christian story among those we are attempting to evangelize. George Hunter says that we, like the ancient church, are up against “ignositics”: people who simply do not know the biblical story.44 Moral assumptions that once made sense of sin no longer resonate with this audience with whom a profound moral relativism has taken hold. The gospel now contends with what researchers Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton term “moralistic therapeutic deism” rather than first-century idolatry.45 This cultural shift ought to impact the theological education in which men and women engage as they prepare for ministry.

Pastors who minister with a sense of having been called and having been sent respond compassionately to their world. They come to their work with a holy curiosity about these people to whom God has sent them. Who are they? What do they believe? What are their chief concerns in life? What are their fears? How do they communicate? The pastor has endless questions to ask of the place. Listening becomes a primary skill for evangelism. Asking, listening, observing, and adapting, the missionary pastor and congregation learn to bring the gospel to the unique culture of the time and place to which God has sent them.

McClendon says that the church is a pilgrim people, not entirely at home in the culture surrounding us. But membership in the people of God remains an open invitation: “Whosoever will may come.” This openness of the church to all human beings creates, McClendon says, both a policy and a problem. “The policy is evangelism, or more broadly, witness: authentic Christian existence is always missionary, possessed only to be imparted to others.

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