Pastoring: Blessing, Curse, Art

The blessing of pastoring is the people—hungry to connect with God, eager to learn of God’s riches, caught up in the sacrificial love and grace of God as they join the Trinitarian dance that moves outward with love to all the world and inward to rest and enjoyment, living a life of sacrificial praise and worship culminating in and propelled by the union of neighbors in the peaceful, blessed body called the Church.

The curse of pastoring is the people—angry as spoiled children fixated on getting their own way, even at the expense of the best interests of others and self, driven by division and one-upsmanship, burning with the world’s lust for power and entertainment and comfort, isolated in a self-made prison of fear and seeking to imprison others, standing outside the Trinitarian dance yet calling the dance steps to those inside.

The art of pastoring is to look past them—all of them—to the crucified, risen Good Shepherd who loves them—each of them—and to live and love and dance among them in the constant direction of his keeping.