the unfolding life of the missional church, part three

Copyright Josh Cooper 2009.

This is the third and final post concerning the unfolding life of the missional church where I explore missional church leadership and a new term [to me anyway] called pneumocracy. You can view my previous posts on the unfolding of the missional church by clicking below.

1. Missional Understanding

2. Ecclesial Practices and Values

Leadership
I’ve been thinking a lot about the role of the pastor in missional communities, and I’d like to explore my version of the munus triplex – the three-fold office – of the pastor as prophet, priest, and poet (Guder). I will attempt to associate an particular practice with each of these offices as identified by Eugene Peterson. For example, the office of prophet is associated with spiritual direction; and the office of priest is coupled with the study of Scripture; and the office of poet is connected to the practice of prayer. Just to be clear, I believe all three offices make use of all three of these practices, but I am stressing a particular value for each office.

Pastor as Prophet
The beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
It is written in Isaiah the prophet:
"I will send my messenger ahead of you,
who will prepare your way”—
"a voice of one calling in the desert,
'Prepare the way for the Lord,
make straight paths for him.' "And so John came, baptizing in the desert region and preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins….And this was his message: "After me will come one more powerful than I, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit” (Mark 1:1-4;7,8).

The way I see it, one of the central functions of the pastor is that of prophet. For centuries prophets proclaimed and enacted the word of the Lord and spoke as the very mouthpiece of the God. Like John the Baptist, one of the purposes of the pastor is to ‘prepare the way for the Lord’ and point people in the direction of “new creation” – new life which can only be found in Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit. Eugene Peterson, in his delightful book, Working the Angles, refers to this calling of pastors as “spiritual direction.” Spiritual direction is, in Peterson’s opinion, one of three callings of the pastor today. The other two callings are: a call to prayer, and a call to biblical study. Peterson says that pastors are abandoning their high callings, and he encourages pastors everywhere to reclaim their commitments to prayer, study, and spiritual direction. Peterson says this about the role of the pastor, “The biblical fact is that there are no successful churches. There are, instead, communities of sinners, gathered before week after week in towns and villages all over the world. The Holy Spirit gathers them and does his work in them. In these communities of sinners, one of the sinners is called pastor and given a designated responsibility in the community. The pastor's responsibility is to keep the community attentive to God. It is this responsibility that is being abandoned in spades" (Peterson). The pastor as prophet – a sinner among sinners – gives voice to God’s story and vision by keeping the community “attentive to God” by providing spiritual direction in a way that proclaims, “Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.”

Pastor as Priest
The practice of Scripture study is connected to the biblical metaphor of the pastor as priest. This practice is intended for the pastor to become “passionate hearers of the word rather than cool readers of the page” (Peterson). One way to be transformed in to passionate hearers of the word is to embody the biblical text. We have learned in our Hebrew courses, and I have come to believe that when we exercise our memories and commit the text to memory, the Word works within us in such a way that we become intimately involved in the story. There is this outside-inside-outside movement that takes place as we move from reading the text to memorizing the text to enacting the text. Peterson says it this way, “Listening to Scripture, of course, presupposes reading Scripture. We have to read before we can listen. But we can read without going on to listen” (Peterson). The key to the practice of Scripture study is to not remain in the reading of Scripture but to move, by the Spirit’s guidance, into the listening (as Peterson puts it) or “embodying” phase of Scripture study.

Pastor as Poet
The last office of the pastor is that of poet. The pastor as poet is most intriguing to me because I’ve never encountered this metaphor before. I’ve associated the practice of prayer with this office. The pastor as poet is an approach to leadership that “enables persons to come to terms with the emotions of change within. What is required of leadership at this point is an ability to articulate, or bring to verbal expression, the actual experiences of the congregation” (??). The pastor not only serves as the mouthpiece of God proclaiming “the way of the Lord” but also serves as the poet for the people. In some way, then, prayers are like poetry – not in the superfluous sense, but in the “from the gut” sense, much like the opening verses of Psalm 130, “Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD; O Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to my cry for mercy.” The pastor as a poet uses his or her voice to cry out to God and articulates the deep-seated emotion that comes from deep inside a person’s gut.

This Psalm is not a Psalm that begins with praise or adoration. It begins at the reality of where the psalmist is – in the very depths. Notice that the psalmist says, Lord, hear my voice, not – Lord, hear my prayer. It’s as if the psalmist is saying I want you Lord to not only hear my words, but I want you to hear my voice. I want you to hear the anguish in my soul…I want you to hear the hurt in my gut. I want you to hear the heart break behind the words. This cry for mercy has come from a deep place – someplace deep within the person’s gut. St. John Chrysostom likened prayers like this to a tree with deep roots, "Prayers like this have immense force, not being overturned or undermined, even should the devil attack with great impetus. Just as, for example, a mighty tree that sends its roots to great depth in the earth resists any blast of wind, whereas the one that rests on the surface is dislodged with a slight breeze blowing against it, is uprooted and falls to the earth, so too do the prayers rising from below after sending roots to the depths remain intense and unyielding."

“Prayers rising from below after sending roots to the depths” have immense force says Chrystostom. The poetical pastor helps give their people a voice to express their most deep-felt longings, fears, and joys. The pastor is “deeply immersed in the Christian Story; listens to the people’s stories; and brings to the surface the voice and soul of the people” (Crossing).

Pneumocracy
It’s at this point in our discussion that I’d like to briefly address the pneumocratic framework within the missional community. Through baptism and faith, all followers of Christ have received certain gifts of the Spirit for edification and encouragement for the entire community. “Therefore it is important that all be involved in discerning what God requires of them” (Guder). Yes, this is true, so why does this seem so impractical to implement? Does pneumocracy necessarily imply that “all” be involved in the discerning processes of where and how God is leading the community? “Thus communities of giftedness are neither autocratic nor democratic but pneumocratic. Authority within missional communities is found neither in particular status nor in majority opinion” (Guder). It seems to me that most, if not all communities of faith, unintentionally teeter somewhere between democracy and pneumocracy. Pneumocracy sounds nice, yet difficult to grasp. How are decisions made? How does this work out practically speaking? Can we even speak practically of it? Guder continues, “The feelings and commitments of all members will be affirmed and considered as they carefully analyze all the available evidence and perspectives on an issue.” Though I'm a little skeptical of this in practice, I'd like to believe that it is possible for congregations to make decisions using this form of decision-making. I just haven't seen it employed effectively.

Questions to Ponder:
1) What is your leadership style? Do any of the offices I mentioned resonate within you?
2) What do you think of Peterson's challenge of focusing only on prayer, Scripture reading, and spiritual direction?
3) How does your community or congregation make decisions? Ever heard of pneumocracy?