Pastoral Care from the Pulpit /not small groups

The pulpit is a place to dispense pastoral care, in fact it is the primary place to dispense pastoral care.  There is this tendency to segregate pastoral care, and pulpit ministry into two separate areas of the pastoral call.  The standard sentiment seems to be that the pulpit is for preaching the gospel, and the visitation or counseling session is for pastoral care.

There are probably a myriad of reasons this dichotomy of preaching/pastoral care has arisen, but I believe the number one reason is that we have come to believe that the Sunday sermon is the primary evangelistic tool of the church.  Most pastors seem to buy into this; the fundamentalist pastor builds his message around saving the lost soul that ventured into a pew, the Church growth guy builds his message around some principles for a better life complete with some cute stories and a joke or two to get them to come back next week, and the missional pastor spends his pulpit time inviting people to participate in social justice or the great commission with his congregation. In all three of the aforementioned examples the sermon is used with the intent of getting the uninvolved, unchurched, or unsaved into the flock.  What is the problem with this?  The problem is that the very covenant community, which happens to be involved, churched, and saved, is never the intended audience of their pastor.  The sheep get neglected in favor of 'potential' sheep.  Now the clever pastors believe they have found a way around this, and that way is small/home/cell group ministry.  The idea is that the pastor cannot preach in such a manner that his faithful will grow, because for them to grow the depth of his sermon would be too much for the 'unchurched'.  So to address the problem the pastor recommends that his faithful sheep go to the small groups to grow and to be cared for.  Sounds great right? Wrong!

I am not anti small group by any means, but I am sick of hearing the "that's wear the real growth happens" line brought out by pastors who have neglected feeding the sheep on Sundays.  In most cases the leaders of small groups who are called to 'facilitate' discussion, and have no theological training and have not been selected by a process that evaluates their qualifications as pastors.  Yes I said their qualifications as pastors!  If we are going to make the small group the primary place where people are pastored, should not their leaders meet the biblical criterion of a pastor?  Do you see the problem?  The sheep are left to whoever is willing to volunteer their home to lead, while potential sheep not yet of the flock get lead by the pastor, the one who has a calling on his life to lead the sheep!  It's all backwards.  Pastors, we are to care for the flock, so that the flock can go healthily into the world with the Gospel to the lost, unchurched, dechurched, or whatever current cliche you drag out when referring to people without Christ.

I do believe in doing visitations as a pastor, especially to the sick.  Yet what is it that you bring to them?  The good news of Christ, who lived, suffered, died, and rose FOR THEM.  That is what pastoral care is all about, bringing the Law and Gospel into the various dark, difficult places where people are.  While visitation is for the individual, Sunday morning is a visitation so to speak for the covenant community, and that is how it should be treated.  We should enter the pulpit with care of the congregation of our Lord as our first concern!  Our goal should be to bring Law and Gospel to the sheep for their health and edification, leaving them emboldened by grace to go into the world.  I will leave the lost to the small groups... but the pulpit ministry is for the sheep.

That was a bit rantish, but think about it.

Salvation Experience!?

I am not a big fan of personal testimonies.  One of the big ideas in modern evangelism is to share your personal testimony with people.  Most of the time when you hear people tell their testimonies it is an embellishment to make them appear worse than they were before they were saved, and better than they are now, but that is beside the point.  When people want to talk about their moment of salvation it usually comes back to some time when they heard the word preached, were at a revival, in a conversation with another believer, in the backseat of a car, or whatever.  I have heard testimony after testimony like these, and I think that every one of them is wrong about their moment of salvation.  I can think of a few significant moments that I can remember when I became acutely aware of the work Christ did for me, but those were not the moments I was 'saved', and the reality is that memories change, and I probably do not even remember those moments exactly as they were.  Moreover, at my baptism I was inaugurated into the covenant community that professes belief in the work Christ did for us, so in some sense that was a salvific experience because in that moment I was identified with my salvation experience (please I am not saying baptismal regeneration here, but I most certainly am not rendering baptism a simple rite of passage either).  Nonetheless I was not 'saved' at my baptism.

There is a huge misunderstanding in Christian testimony, and the sharing of testimonies often misses the Gospel altogether.  I am not against the community of faith sharing various personal testimonies, but I am against the sharing of 'salvation testimonies', I will explain why, after I share my salvation testimony.

So here is my testimony:

Jesus, the son of God, 2000 years ago in real history lived a legally, ethically, morally perfect life which led Him eventually to a garden.  Jesus knelt in that garden called Gethsemane in prayer and agreed to the eternal plan of the Father to drink 'the cup'.  The cup was indeed the cup of wrath against all sin (Psalm 75:8).  After Jesus prayed he was led out of the garden, put on trial and sentenced to die on a Roman cross.  On the cross Jesus endured the punishment for the sin of the world and drank down that cup of wrath.  As he consumed the last of that cup the rocks tore into pieces (because the world is held together in Christ) and the veil temple was torn (because Christ is our protection/mediator in the holy of holies).  When done, he proclaimed 'It [the cup] is finished'.  Jesus died, the wrath of God was consumed by Him.  On the third day after his death Jesus rose again, validating that He is Son of God, and that He was victorious over sin.

The question that will be asked is "how can you share your testimony without mentioning yourself?"  I guess what I wonder is why other people's testimonies contain so much about themselves.  I only contributed one thing to my salvation, and that was the sin that necessitated it.

Jesus' life, death, and resurrection is my salvation experience.  It is my experience because my sin was in Christ as he was enduring the wrath of God.  It is my experience because Christ rose victoriously over sin on my behalf.  It is my experience, because his perfect righteousness has been given to me.  It is my story because it was His body, given FOR ME.  It was His blood, shed FOR ME.  That is my experience.

Here is why I do not like 'personal testimonies', because the historical salvation experience I shared above is the salvation experience of everyone who has ever believed whether they know it or not.  Personal testimony should give way to corporate testimony!  We all share the same testimony which is why we are united.  We have all been adopted by the same Father, through the same means.

Now, is there a place to celebrate the effects that the Gospel has had on our lives?  Absolutely!  If personal testimony is the sharing of Gospel fruit, the edifying of one another because of what Christ has done for us, and celebrating how that has affected our families, our lives, our peace, then great!  However when it comes to salvation experience, we all have the same one, that happened at the same time, through the same person.

If someone asks you to point to your moment of conversion, point them to the true historical narrative of your salvation.... which occurred nearly 2000 years ago.