The Praxis of Giving Thanks
The Praxis of Giving Thanks
In the October post, I wrote a piece to which I gave the title Appreciating and Understanding Your Pastor. Of course, in American church circles, October has come to be known as Pastor Appreciation Month. If you read the article, you might remember that I wrote that appreciation of something or someone is enhanced if we also have a degree of understanding of something or someone. And this is true about the relationship between pastors and the people they lead and serve.
I have come to see a healthy, wholesome relationship of pastor and people as a pivotal partnership that is vital to the worship, work, and witness of the church. Neither the pastor nor the people can reach their full potential as persons and as a community of Christ followers if this God-designed relationship is fractured and flawed and the partnership is undeveloped, underdeveloped, or broken.
If I may digress a little further, earlier this year I wrote four articles on the particular partnership of mutual intercessory prayer between pastors and people. I wrote that both pastors and people have a biblical call and responsibility to pray for one another. When you get a chance, go back and read, or reread, those articles. I think you might agree that there’s a theme developing some traction in my heart. So, get prepared for the next iteration of The Pickled Priest!
For those of you left puzzled by that last statement, let me explain myself. In June 2011, I published my last book. It was entitled The Pickled Priest and the Perishing Parish. The idea of the pickled priest came from a poem I wrote in seminary, expressing a kind of awakening I had had during my theological studies, when I realized that my whole spiritual formation and biblical worldview, such as they were at the time, had been the product of the spiritual pickling process of growing up Southern, of growing up Baptist, of growing up in the 1950’s and 60’s, and of growing up in a family in which going to church was not an option. It was a way of life. I was immersed in it, preserved in it, and flavored by it.
One day in one of my classes my first year at Southwestern Baptist theological Seminary, I realized that as much as I was learning theologically, I was also learning a lot about myself. I learned that I had a lot to learn, that the God I believed in was far greater than the little God my small, but sincere, faith and experience had imagined. I loved my whole seminary experience. It broadened and deepened and expanded my theological understanding, my relationship with the Lord, and my call to the Gospel ministry. I never felt that any of my professors were out to change my worldview, as some had warned me they would. But I also knew they couldn’t. I was pickled! I was well-preserved in the pickling juices of biblical faith, the church culture of the 50’s and 60’s, and my own family history.
In 2010, when I wrote The Pickled Priest, I was celebrating my 20th Anniversary as Senior Pastor of my home church. But at a deeply personal level, I was dealing with a lot of uncertainty about the future of the church that I loved pastoring and with my own future as their shepherd. The second part of the title – The Perishing Parish – is a not-so-veiled hint at my growing concern for the church in America, but also for the church that I was entrusted to care for and lead. We seemed to be in neutral, the machinery was revved up and humming, but the church wasn’t gaining much ground in her mission of making disciples and advancing the Kingdom. I began to see that a pickled priest and a pickled people needed a new approach, a new way of seeing ourselves and seeing the mission field, new ways of thinking, and new practices that would position us to impact our perishing parish by making disciples, laboring together as partners in the harvest of souls for Christ.
A baker’s dozen years have rolled by since that time, and I’d like to explore in more depth this pivotal partnership between pastors and people. I’d like to approach it with two goals in mind. The first is challenge current pastors, elders, priests, and shepherds of God’s flock to take a fresh look at their biblical roles and responsibilities to the people of God entrusted to their care, including the privilege and responsibility that is theirs to build and strengthen the God-ordained relationship/partnership, for which good shepherding for God’s people is essential. The second goal is to peel back the pastoral mask and let the people of God see the good heart of a good shepherd and offer some explanation to them about how he thinks and why he does what he does. That is, his praxes of pastoring.
I’m calling this series of articles: The Pickled Priest and the Praxes of Pastoring. A praxis refers to an ongoing practice or the customary way of doing things, as opposed to theory. Pastoring people encompasses many biblical and spiritual practices (praxes).
For example, I believe good shepherding for God’s people could easily begin with giving thanks. The pastor who would model his life and ministry after the Good Shepherd will constantly give thanks to God for the people God has called him to lead and entrusted to his care, recognizing the blessing each one is and the blessings of the flock as a whole.
If pastors and their people are to work together with appreciation and understanding, giving thanks is a good place to begin. Gratitude is an attitude, but giving thanks is an act. It’s an act of worship, love, and blessing offered to God and others. Pastors who practice giving thanks to God for their people will receive more of a blessing from God in return, than the pastor who sees them as a burden, or only sees their flaws.
We all know what a difficult, immature, problem-riddled church Corinth was. But notice how Paul begins his first letter to them. I am writing to God’s church in Corinth, to you who have been called by God to be his own holy people. He made you holy by means of Christ Jesus, just as he did for all people everywhere who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours. May God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ give you grace and peace. I always thank my God for you and for the gracious gifts he has given you, now that you belong to Christ Jesus. Through him, God has enriched your church in every way—with all of your eloquent words and all of your knowledge. This confirms that what I told you about Christ is true. Now you have every spiritual gift you need as you eagerly wait for the return of our Lord Jesus Christ. He will keep you strong to the end so that you will be free from all blame on the day when our Lord Jesus Christ returns. God will do this, for he is faithful to do what he says, and he has invited you into partnership with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
What I would want pastors to do simply from a heart of gratitude is to practice the giving of thanks to God for the church. I would want pastors to give thanks to God for the individuals he brings to their minds, even if they can’t think of a good reason to be thankful for them, other than that they’re a member of the flock and someone for whom Christ died. And what would I want church members to know? Know that God calls imperfect men to serve as shepherds of imperfect sheep. I believe in their times of quiet worship before the Lord, times apart from the stress and strain of leading and caring for his people with all their problems and personalities, many pastors gladly inhale the Breath of God and humbly exhale a prayer of thanks to God for all his people.
Happy Thanksgiving,
Everyone!