Pastoral Excellence – Pentecostal Style
A Pentecostal Vision of Pastoral Excellence
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To craft a “Pentecostal Vision of Pastoral Excellence,” we initiated a series of conversations among ourselves, with pastors through focus groups and surveys, and with church leaders. Drawing from those various perspectives, three streams eventually flowed into the resulting vision, which shaped our initial Sustaining Pastoral Excellence project and an expanded successor initiative, Making Connections.
First, our vision of the practice of pastoral excellence was informed by a holistic “know-be-do” Pentecostal spirituality. Consistent with our integrationist and transformationist spirituality, Pentecostal pastors expect what they know to be integrated into who they are and expressed in what they do. For Pentecostals – especially those with our Wesleyan orientation – charismata or empowerment for ministry cannot be separated from character or virtue. Historically and spiritually, Pentecostals have held that commitment to discipleship and holiness is both a prerequisite and a continuing condition of the Spirit-filled life. To be filled with the Spirit is to be filled with the Holy Spirit who manifests the nature and character of the Holy God. Thus, Pentecostal pastoral excellence is, first, to excel in the fullness of the Spirit in its spiritual, social, and moral dimensions.
Given this understanding of Pentecostal spirituality, then, pastors need to be formed as well as informed , deeply known in community as well as institutionally affirmed and credentialed, and they need continual encouragement, accountability, and care as well as ongoing training. As we developed our vision, these needs led us to emphasize practicing spiritual disciplines, maintaining physical, emotional, familial, and financial health, and exercising leadership in the context of covenant relationships of accountability and care. A holistic vision of pastoral excellence grounded in Pentecostal spirituality is concerned with more than a mere technological or functionalist view of ministry.
Second, our vision was informed by reflective current pastoral practice and wisdom. To take seriously Pentecostal spirituality and its distinctive theological perspective is not to be irrelevant to contemporary pastoral practice.1 As Grant Wacker argued in his book, Heaven Below, Pentecostals have historically reflected the dual influences of primitivism and pragmatism.2 They have sought to be faithful to a Spirit-led recovery of New Testament practices of faith and ministry. Because of their sense of missional urgency, however, Pentecostals have also been experimenters and innovators much like their spiritual ancestor, John Wesley. To forge a “practical” theology of pastoral excellence, we considered it essential to ask pastors to reflect about the kinds of pastoral practices that need to be sustained for excellence in ministry.3 In focus group conversations and survey responses, pastors affirmed the importance of the practice of spiritual disciplines and personal holistic health but also added to our vision new emphases on pastoral care, effective administrative leadership, and preaching and teaching the Word of God.
These latter skills—pastoral care, administration, and preaching and teaching—reveal some tensions in the Pentecostal community about pastoral ministry. On the one hand, Pentecostals look for things of the Spirit when they talk about good ministry. “Excellence” as it relates to ministry skills doesn't always fit that conversation very well. Of course, viewing excellence in pastoral ministry as a matter of the Spirit can lead to a privatistic or simplistic vision. But on the positive side, it suggests the hope and expectation that Pentecostals have for pastors to exemplify, exercise leadership, and excel in the Spirit life.
On the other hand, many Pentecostals, as evidenced by the increased popularity of “leadership” literature among our ranks, would understand pastoral excellence as indicative of technological proficiency in ministry. An excellent pastor, therefore, is one who is highly skilled in the various ministerial functions that pastors need to perform. Such a perspective, however, can result in a compartmentalized, shallow, overly technological, and spiritually sterile vision of pastoral ministry. Indeed, many current trends in Pentecostal pastoral practice and leadership development do in fact suffer from this malady. But this desire for proficiency also reflects the concomitant hope and expectation that pastors will know what they are doing and will be able to do well those tasks necessary for the effectiveness and health of the churches they lead.
What we are attempting do in our project is to invite pastors and others to reflect on their vision of pastoral excellence in a way that affirms the spiritual (Spirit) and practical (skills) emphases but also integrates them into a more holistic and missional vision of pastoral ministry that is consistent with Pentecostal identity. So, we hope, the more theologically and practically reflective we are about pastoral excellence, the more likely we are to move away from the individualistic, technological, and competition-driven orientation to a vision that is communal, holistic, and yet missionally relevant and effective.
Third, our vision is informed by the contemporary missional needs of the Pentecostal Movement. The Pentecostal mission is a burgeoning movement around the world but in many place—particularly in the United States —it needs redirection and renewal. In the United States, Pentecostal pastors have suffered loss of community, deterioration of support and accountability structures, loss of constitutive Pentecostal practices, waning missionary fervor, and lack of relevance to searching people in our culture. To avoid a knee-jerk reaction that leads to faddishness and, potentially, unfaithful practice, Church of God pastors need a supportive context in which to theologize about these challenges and the practice of ministry.4 We hear what the Alban Institute, Barna Research, Pulpit and Pew, and others say about the growing shortage of clergy, the loss of quality pastoral candidates and leadership, and the need to cultivate minority and female leadership for the church. The data from our own pastoral survey of Church of God pastors confirms the significance of many of these issues for us.5 So our vision lifts up discipleship, compassion and care, spiritual direction, and peer mentoring of new candidates for pastoral ministry as key aspects of pastoral excellence.
At the same time, we also feel the effects of a graying Pentecostal church in the U.S., the closings of more churches than are being planted, shifts away from centralized denominational structure and functioning, and the need for a new ecumenism. We see these streams coming together, and we see ourselves at the Church of God Theological Seminary being the catalyst for creative, even revolutionary, renewal at this kairotic moment for the Pentecostal Movement. Our Center for Spiritual Renewal, our Center for Pentecostal Leadership and Care, the leadership role of many of our faculty in the Society for Pentecostal Studies, our dialogue with Catholics and others position us to be a key visionary partner and voice for the future of Pentecostal Christianity. We see the formational dynamics of our project – covenant relationships, collaboration, dialogue, spiritual formation, contextual relevance, facilitative leadership – providing the kind of transformational polity and process within which a truly missionary Pentecostalism can take shape that will serve the challenges of the larger Christian mission in the world.
When we bring pastors together in covenant groups, they cry, laugh, bare their souls, and share their pastoral wisdom with one another in ways that powerfully transform their lives, relationships, and ministries. They say such things as “I have served with these pastors on various boards and committees for 20 years, but I never really knew them until now.” Or, “I have never seen a process so adaptable and flexible to meet pastors' needs as this process.” Or they make confessions to one another like, “I don't know if I have one friend in this state.” Or, “Although I have planted a church successfully, I was ready to quit the ministry. This group is an answer to prayer.” We want pastors to rediscover the power of that kind of community for their lives and ministries and, then — and this is crucial – to see such community as the paradigm for local church life and mission, ministry development, and engagement of other believers as well.
A prayerful but ambitious agenda drives our pastoral excellence project. We want to see a change in our denomination that can impact the Pentecostal Movement and the larger Christian community. We see the opportunity for our project – grounded as it is in our Pentecostal identity and ethos — to effect a pastoral reformation that can contribute to an ecclesial reformation that can then, hopefully, support a missional reformation in the Pentecostal Movement, especially in the United States. For that to happen, our vision of pastoral excellence must be true to who we are called to be spiritually and theologically, where we are contextually, and what we are called to do missionally, as Pentecostals. If such a reformation occurs, not only will Pentecostals receive a spiritual gift, but so will the larger Christian community. To that end we pray and work.
James P. Bowers, Ph.D., is academic dean and executive director of the Center for Pentecostal Leadership and Care, Church of God Theological Seminary, Cleveland, Tenn.
1 Against those who argue the lack of a “Pentecostal theology,” see Donald W. Dayton, Theological Roots of Pentecostalism (Grand Rapids: Francis Asbury Press, 1987), pp. 15-33; and Steven J. Land, Pentecostal Spirituality: A Passion for the Kingdom (Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993), pp. 15-57.
2 Grant Wacker, Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2001), pp. 10-14.
3 Various discussions of practical theology have emphasized the need for practice-informed theologizing about church and ministry. See in this regard Ray S. Anderson, The Shape of Practical Theology: Empowering Ministry with Theological Praxis (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2001); and Miroslav Volf and Dorothy C. Bass, eds., Practicing Theology: Beliefs and Practices in Christian Life (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2002).
4 Dialogue with other church leaders and theological educators in the Center for Ministry Excellence seminars on Theology and Pastoral Excellence has confirmed this need for many pastors. Our staff is developing a series of “Case Studies in Ministry and Theology” for our pastoral groups that provide opportunity for communal theologizing about the practice of ministry. Facilitators are trained and guide questions are provided for effective use of this resource. To date, this resource is being well-received in the Pastoral Covenant Groups in our project.
5 See James P. Bowers, Portrait and Prospect: Church of God Pastors Face the 21 st Century (Cleveland, Tennessee: Center for Pentecostal Leadership and Care, 2004).
