Mastering the Pastoral Role

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Our vocation is our calling to serve Christ; our occupations are the jobs we do to earn our way in the world. While it is our calling to press our occupations into the service of our vocation, it is idolatrous to equate the two.
—Ben Patterson

I was kneeling on the steps of the chancel with several hands laid on my shoulder. The occasion was my ordination into the ministry, and the pastor was praying a seemingly interminable prayer for God's blessing and power to be upon me. My legs had started to cramp. Sweat was soaking through my black robe, a garment whose origins were in Northern Europe and whose wearer was in Southern California on a balmy May evening. And my knees felt as though they were piercing the scarlet carpet.

Does he think I need more prayer than usual? I thought. Then, as if in answer to my question, he prayed, "Lord, as Ben feels the weight of these hands upon his shoulders, may he feel the weight of what he has been called to do."

Amen.

"But may he feel also the strength of your everlasting arms bearing him up."

Amen and amen!

That is what ministry has been like ever since: an impossible, unbearable job accompanied by an improbable, inexplicable strength.

The apostle Paul took inventory of his vocation and asked, "Who is equal to such a task?" My version of that question comes several times a year as I step into the pulpit: Patterson, I wonder, just what do you think you are doing here? Who are you, of all people, to tell several hundred people what God thinks?

The question has struck me on other occasions, too. One Sunday a man from my checkered past came to see if the preacher was indeed the same Ben Patterson he had known years earlier. I'm sure he wondered what I was doing leading a service of worship. Seeing ...

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