WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A PASTOR
Sherman Roddy
January 1, 1990
Many years have passed since the congregation of the Mount Pleasant Baptist Church of Ambler, Pennsylvania, gave a reception for me and my family. I was their new minister, fresh out of seminary, eagerly pursuing graduate study at the University of Pennsylvania, ready to set the church and world aright.
While welcoming me during that event, the spokesman for the board of deacons, a Christian along in years, concluded with these words: "You have become our minister; so our Sunday bulletins and stationery state. While you are here, I hope you will also become our pastor."
As a young man, I regarded the metaphor of "pastor" lightly. The minister as counselor? Excellent. Teacher? Superb. Administrator? Prestigious. But pastor? Quaint. We no longer lived in a rural world, but in a technological society. Shepherding imagery, I reasoned, was archaic.
How mistaken I was! Life increasingly has become dominated by things and those who make, fix, adjust, or destroy them. Many have a growing sense that people, too, are things to be used, played with, manipulated, changed, or cast aside.
Today I recognize the wisdom in the valedictory words of my grandfather Roddy, who, in the late summer of 1916, took my father to Grand Central Station to board a train for Boston, where he would begin his training for the Christian ministry. Embracing his son, he said, "Clarence, I hope you never become a great preacher. Rather, learn to bind up the wounds of the hurt, bring comfort to the bereaved, hope to the despairing, and strength to the weak."
My grandfather went to his grave knowing his son had heeded his words, even though Clarence Roddy was also known as an extraordinary preacher and teacher of preachers at Fuller Theological Seminary.
Shortly after ...
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