Who I want to be

I didn't think I would ever want to be a pastor. Overworked, underpaid, slandered, abused by Church goers, elders, friends, and strangers. And yet hear I am, taking a pastoral stance on a lot of things these days. When I encounter someone I disagree with I don't care about winning an argument, I want to understand them, I want to know why they think the way they do. Everyone comes with a story and that story defines them and speaks louder than cold logic. It is better to listen than to speak. It is better to pick your battles and try to keep the peace. It is better to be gentle than confrontational. The truth should be spoken in love, the welfare of others should come before proving yourself right. Once I thought I wanted to outwit and put the enemies of Christ to shame, now I see them as hurting people and I think I begin to understand why it is God who judges and why it is inappropriate for me to condemn anyone. What do I know about a stranger's past or the inner thoughts of another? My hope is to offer anyone who comes to me a listening ear, the best of good will, a helping hand, and through the will of the Father and the action of the Holy Spirit, Christ himself.

I still want to teach and use logic but it needs to be used appropriately, tempered with grace. I have to face it, God has given me a pastoral heart. Within a year I will have graduated from seminary with a Master of Arts in Systematic Theology. I can put two and two together, I will probably be involved in ministry. And why not? Preaching is similar to teaching except you are teaching specifically from the Scriptures. I think I would like that. I believe it was Karl Barth who said that unless you are going to preaching to Gospel you have have learned nothing about theology.

And then there is the topic of my thesis. Thomas Watson and his doctrine of repentance. The more I read about him the more I admire him. According to the editor's notes in his Glory of Jerusalem: a vision of what the Church should be, Watson was not considered especially brilliant by his contemporaries. He was a studious man who deeply cared for others and made his living by preaching the Gospel, bringing the ivory tower of philosophical and theological thought down to the vulgar and common everyday life. He was not a clever innovator or an outstanding theologian, he was a faithful witness of Christ and a good steward of what God had given him. If I could learn from him and become what he was in his day, I think I would be most happy. I don't consider myself especially brilliant, but I do care for others and wish to see them come into the fullness of Christ. Some might consider me studious. When I read about Watson I do not consider myself so. He graduated with a Masters, the same sort of Masters that I will be graduating with. He graduated with a thorough understanding of Greek, Hebrew, and Latin in addition to a thorough knowledge of Classical literature, the Patristics, the Scholastics, and the Reformers. I will be graduating with a minimally functional understanding of Greek and Hebrew and a general overview of the Patristics and a loose map of a host of theological concepts. I will need to continue my studies privately if I am to ever catch up to him. Then again, a Master's degree in the 17th century could have been about the equivalent of 3 doctorates today. Will have to look into that at some point.

In any case, I find in Watson a vision of the sort of man I want to be. A pastoral teacher who uses the academic training he received to encourage, instruct, exhort, challenge, and lead God's sheep, his precious Church. The sort of man who multiplies what his master entrusts him with who will one day be able to say, "you gave me these talents, look I have put them to good use and multiplied them in your name!"