Twenty First Century Pastor
by David Fisher
a BOOK REVIEW
by Forum member - Samuele Corciulo

"God wants us to know that our primary cues come from Him. Our identity is found in His Son, who calls us to His service. We must learn to live under God’s smile, knowing that human smiles are mere frosting on that divine cake. Our sense of purpose and success must come from our identity as Christ’s servants.” (Fisher 1996, 28).

With these words Fisher wants to convey the importance for a pastor to live life and ministry in a way that place God above all else. He has to be the foundation and source of all that a minister does. I personally see this concept as applicable to all Christians in general and not only to those who are involved in a specific form of ministry. When God is the foundation and the source in the life of an individual, this person will experience true joy, purpose and success, because these things come from the only infinite and unshakable source that is God. Opposite to this, all things that are based on man are imperfect, can fail and are definitely a mere temporary satisfaction when scaled in comparison of eternity.

Unfortunately today not all ministers manage to conduct their ministry in this way. Fisher in his book attributes this problem to two main facts, the first one is that many ministers fail in seeing their identity as Pastors in a correct way, and the second is that they seek the approval of the people around them more than the approval that comes from God. When it comes to their identity Fisher denounces the fact that the theology of the work of the pastor has been gradually replaced with a secular approach that places the importance of the practice of the work itself above what God intended a pastor to be. Fisher writes, “There is not accepted theology of the ministry in our time. Instead, the practice of ministry has become the theology. The task itself is the model.” (Fisher 1996, 9). A pastor's true identity is simply the one of a servant who knows that he belongs to his master, Jesus. He will faithfully serve Him first and he knows that his service to the people around him is important but comes second; all that he does it is directly influenced by God and not dictated by the people and the situations around him. In his first letter to the Thessalonians Paul writes “We were not looking for praise from people, not from you or anyone else.... Just as a nursing mother cares for her children, 8 so we cared for you…” (1 Thess. 2:6-8 ), Paul had a clear understanding of his identity as a servant of God, and in these two statements we see him prioritising the work of God above people’s consent and at the same time not neglecting the importance and the essence of his work which was to care for the people around him.

The second major problem highlighted by Fisher, is that too often Pastors compromise the truth of the Gospel with unbiblical principles, approaches, and philosophies that are appealing to the secular society around us. Having said this, it is important though for us to clarify that there is a distinction between compromising the truth of the Gospel and adapting the communication of its message to the various cultures and to the everchanging generations of people who have lived, live and will live on this planet. In fact if we observe Paul’s ministry we will notice how he often would adapt his approach of the preaching of the gospel to the various cultures that he would meet in his missionary journeys. Speaking of his ability to adapt and identify with the various people Paul writes, “…I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some. 23I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings.” (1 Chor. 9:22-23 NIV). Paul never compromised the message itself, but surely he was very capable and wise in adapting its communication to various people. This is the challenge for all pastors and more in general ministers, to be contemporary in the communication of the Gospel without compromising its authenticity and integrity.
It is hard to identify among these two issues which one is the most significant for today’s pastor, in fact the truth is that both situations are strictly related to one another. When pastors forget that God is the foundation of their identity, they will be tossed in all directions by the secular society around them and they will eventually start compromising the truth of the Gospel with ungodly mind-sets that are clearly not based on God.

In his book The 21st Century Pastor, Fisher use the term Incarnational to indicate the type of approach that every pastor should use in their ministry. In this type of approach the understanding of people’s culture is essential in order to accomplish our mission to reach out to them. Fisher explains that God himself has used this approach to reach out to man and to defeat sin once and for all; Paul in chapter 2 of his epistle to the Philippians explains very well that Jesus left the glory of heaven to come and inhabit among man, He become flesh in human likeness, and He came to serve us. God came to earth through the incarnation of His son Jesus Christ, He lived among man, learnt the culture, spoke the language, understood and sympathized with the difficulties and the challenges that man faced in his/her everyday life.

I do agree with Fisher that pastors, and more generally the church, need to “incarnate” into something that is understandable by the people of this generation and by the various cultures that you can find around the world. As I wrote above it is possible to adapt the communication of the Gospel to the various people without compromising its message. In Jesus we can see the best demonstration of the incarnational Gospel; His ministry and communication show a beautiful balance between teaching in a way that was understood by the people around Him, and by the doing of actions that were purposefully made to communicate specifically with certain people. An Incarnational type of ministry must also include these two components, the preaching and the doing, expressed in a way that is understandable by the people around us. George Hunter speaking about the importance of the way in which we communicate the Gospel writes, “Most churches today, however, expect pre-Christian people to be like church people culturally; they are expected to understand and speak the church’s accent and vocabulary…” (George H. 2010, 92). The problem is that often churches miss the point of how important it is to understand the culture, the place and the time in which they live causing them not to be ineffective in the way they communicate the message of the Gospel.

In the examples below I will try to briefly to describe how an incarnational type of ministry could look like in three different aspects of a pastor's life and ministry, his teaching and his life.

The way he teaches and preaches. A pastor would present his/her preaching by using a language that is understood by his audience and would give applications that can be easily related to the people. The use of a more modern translation of the Bible would help the pastor on this as it uses a language that can be easily read and understood by the current generation.

The way he would affect others in a practical way. A pastor would take Christian biblical principles and incarnate them within the community. For example the principle of solidarity could be easily shown by meeting the needs of the poor within the community by setting up a Food Bank or other similar services.
The way he lives his life. He would become to his/her congregation a living example of what the message of the Gospel is all about. This would greatly help the discipleship process because people would not just hear about the Gospel but actually see a living example of it in their leader

The picture of a pastor being envisioned as a father and a mother to God’s children, is clearly expressed by Paul in his letter to the Thessalonians, he describes the picture of a mother caring for her children, “…Just as a nursing mother cares for her children, so we cared for you…” (1 Thess. 2:7-8), and few verses late the one of a father, “For you know that we dealt with each of you as a father deals with his own children, encouraging, comforting and urging you to live lives worthy of God, who calls you into his kingdom and glory.” (1 Thess. 2:11-12).

When we meditate on the fact that a minister is like a parent to his/her congregation, the way we handle ministry will change entering a complete new paradigm. Many ministers handle their ministry more like a job than a responsibility of a parent to his children as described by Paul. If we think about the relationship of a parent to his/her children, among the many things we will surely find love, sacrifice and servanthood. All these things are also present in the heart of God and His dealing with His children, therefore they have to be present in the heart of a minister in his dealings with his congregation. The way ministers live their ministry is fundamental to the outcome that they will have on their congregation; if ministry become simply a job, people will feel it and run away from it, but if people can feel almost like a parental relationship between them and their minister, they will be attracted and shaped by it. What a minister says and does is fundamental because it influences the lives of people around him/her, on this John Carr writes, “Some of us in leadership have never fully realized the enduring impression our life has had on the people around us. All that we are, all that we say and all that we do deeply affect both the members of the church and the people of the community where we reside or minister” (A.J. Carr 1992, 37).

The pastor as a mother. Fisher suggests that if we observe the relationship of a mother to her own child we will find grace, tenderness and sacrifice. A mother is graceful to her children, always ready to show love and to offer a second chance to her children. A mother is tender and delicate, she rejoices when her children rejoice and she is broken when they suffer. A mother is ready to sacrifice herself for her children, right from the beginning she is ready to face the risk and the pain of childbirth. Fisher carries on explaining that these qualities have also to be present in a pastor heart, a graceful heart able to show true love to all people, even those who do not deserve it. A tender heart will enable the pastor to sympathise with the people around him/her in both the good and bad moments. And finally a pastor heart is ready to sacrifice, to run the extra mile even when the situation gets tough.
The Pastor as a father. For this illustration Fisher takes the parable of the prodigal son and explains that the waiting father resembles the heart of God. This father had a deep love for his son who had run away from him, he waited every day for him to come back home, and when he finally comes back the father welcomes him, he rejoices with him, and he celebrates with him. This beautiful story shows the deep and unconditional love of the father for his son, the picture of him waiting for his son speaks of a father who was longing to reconcile with him, to accept him, to give another chance, to encourage him, to forgive him and to celebrate with him. Love becomes the essential ingredient that has to be also present in a pastor’s heart. Describing the figure of this father Fisher writes, “The waiting father is God’s description of himself, fathers, and pastors” (Fisher 1996, 168). We have seen above that Paul associates the figure of the pastor to the figure of a father, and the parable of the prodigal son shows the qualities that a father must have, the conclusion therefore is that a pastor is called to deeply love his/her congregation, and this love will translate in forgiveness, offering other chances to people, encouraging people, celebrating people, acceptance and finally a deep desire to see people reconciled to our heavenly Father.

I personally do agree with Fisher when he associates the figure of the pastor to the one of a parent. Being a pastor is not a profession which require a specific course of actions in order to be successful, it requires love, understanding, care and the ability to wisely adapt to the various situations that different people around you will bring up. Just like a good parent loves and cares for the children God has entrusted him with, so the pastor has to love the people God has entrusted him.

The Pastor as ambassador and preacher
Speaking of the figure of the pastor as the one of a preacher and ambassador, Fisher started by painting an overall picture of what the world is today and its culture. Fisher points out that we live in a generation in which any kind of authority is in one way or another undermined, especially in the western world everybody feels like they have authority over themselves and are not ready to submit, or accept, any other ‘voice’ that does not fit into their boxes of what the world has to look like. This phenomenon is even more evident when it comes to God’s truth and authority; people don’t like to hear something different from what they think is right and definitely they don’t like the thought that there is a God in heaven who has authority over all created things including their lives. J.I. Packer writes “So the anti-authority syndrome now current in the west, leading as it does to lives haphazard hedonism in which my feelings of like and dislike are the only authority I recognize, is a major human tragedy” (J.I. Packer 1996, 17).

This overall picture of this generation makes the work of the preacher more difficult because people are not ready to be taught and ministered, they want to hear what they like to hear and not what God’s truth has to say about their lives and situations. The apostle Paul foresaw the problem and warned Timothy “For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.” (2 Tim 4:3, NIV). All of this can sound very discouraging for a preacher to hear, but there are two things that are fundamentally important to understand, the first one is that the one who preaches God’s word is not alone in doing that but God is with him, and the second one is that the preacher’s job is not to convince people but simply to speak God’s word and to leave the convincing part to the Holy Spirit. On this Eleazer writes, “It is neither the speaker's skill nor his ideas about life, religion, or thoughts and powers of persuasion that make a speech preaching; it is the proclamation of the Word of God” (Eleazer E. Javier 2013, 154).
This last point is strictly related with the fact that all Christians, and in the context of this paper a pastor, are God’s ambassadors; the role of an ambassador is to carry the voice and the authority of a king or a nation. In the same way when a pastor preaches, he/she carries the authority of the one who sent him/her, God.
Fisher describes the pastor as an ambassador and a preacher, and like Fisher I do believe that the effectiveness of this combination is essential and liberating. It is essential because to preach without God’s authority would be just performing an empty talk, and it is liberating because we understand that it is not by our own power that we preach but by the power and authority of God. It is God, the One whom we represent, that enables us, the church, to do what He has called us to do for Him. We are all in a mission, unworthy and incapable, but with a great King behind us who supports us and allows us to carry His authority wherever we go and whenever we speak.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
David Fisher. The 21st century pastor. 1996, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan
A. John Carr. I will build my church – Planting and developing a New Testament church. 1992, Charis Publications, Dundee, Scotland, UK
George G. Hunter. The Celtic way of evangelism: How Christianity can reach the west… again. 1938, Abingdon Press, Nashville, USA
K.I. Packer. Truth & Power – The Place of Scripture in the Christian Life. 1996, Harold Shaw Publishers, Wheaton, Illinois, USA
Eleazer E. Javier. The Work of the Pastor. 2013 Second Edition, Global University, Springfield, Missouri, USA