Pastoral Ministry

Republished with permission from Voice magazine, July/August 2012.

After the initial shock of hearing the words, “and my resignation is effective…” confusion is bound to reign for a while. What do we do after our pastor resigns? Generally, a pastoral search committee is formed to go about the task of finding another shepherd for the flock. But the congregation needs to do more than just seek another pastor. While it’s not as easy as A B C, the information that follows will help address other needs of the congregation.

A—ASSESSMENT

Assessment comes in the form of asking questions, even the hard ones. Where are we as a congregation? Did the pastor leave under difficult circumstances? Were there moral, ethical or other problems that damaged testimonies? Is the congregation and/or board divided? What are the vital signs of the fellowship? What are the strengths and weaknesses? Does the church need outside help to be objective and put things back into perspective? Are there problems within the congregation that need to be handled? What will be the process? Are there relationships to be reconciled outside the church?

This one goes back a few years but appeared most recently in Voice, May/June, 2012.

Recently, I listened to an edition of Pastor Pastor, a radio program just for pastors, sponsored by Focus on the Family. The theme was “What I like about being a pastor.” That theme really put its hand upon me, because usually programs geared to the pastor deal with negatives such as coping with problems.

Being a pastor, I am well aware of the myriad of difficulties associated with pastoral ministry. These tensions erode the passion of many ministers, driving them out of the ministry. I have heard that from the time a career pastor begins his ministry to the time he finds another vocation is fourteen years. Such a high attrition rate is alarming when you consider the many years of specialized training that pastors have sacrificed to obtain. Some pastors are out of the ministry before they have paid off their school loans.

I will not attempt to thoroughly analyze such a complex problem in this brief article, nor will I deal with it without a sympathetic heart. My goal is to provide a measure of help to pastors who simply do not like being pastors.

I believe that a big part of the problem is that pastors tend to focus on the negatives of the ministry (and there are many) rather than the positives (and there are many).

By David M. Gower. Posted with permission from Baptist Bulletin May/June 2012. All rights reserved.

People expect a lot from a pastor—including standing up for justice and helping those in need. But they also expect him to provide confidential spiritual guidance. So what happens when these expectations collide? What happens when a pastor learns that someone he is counseling has committed a crime? To whom does the pastor owe his loyalty: the person being counseled, or the victim of the crime? These questions are at the center of a rape case now pending in a Michigan court of appeals that will set precedent in Michigan and could have ramifications nationwide.

People of Michigan v. Samuel Bragg

John Vaprezsan is the pastor of Metro Baptist Church, an independent Baptist church in Belleville, Mich. In 2009, reports USA Today, a woman in the church told Vaprezsan that her daughter had been raped by Samuel Bragg, a teenager who also attended Metro Baptist. The girl was just 9 years old at the time of the assault.

After hearing this disturbing news, Vaprezsan asked Bragg and his mother to meet him at the church. Vaprezsan claims that at the meeting Bragg confessed to sexually assaulting the girl. Later Vaprezsan gave a statement to police and Bragg was charged with first-degree criminal sexual assault. But Bragg and his mother deny making any confession.

Knowing that his testimony would be vital to the case, Vaprezsan agreed to testify in court about the details of Bragg’s confession. However, the trial judge ruled that Vaprezsan’s testimony was inadmissible because it would violate Michigan’s clergy privilege statute, which states,

No minister of the gospel, or priest of any denomination whatsoever, or duly accredited Christian Science practitioner, shall be allowed to disclose any confessions made to him in his professional character, in the course of discipline enjoined by the rules or practice of such denomination.¹

The prosecutor appealed the trial judge’s decision to the Michigan court of appeals, which has not issued its ruling as of this writing.²