Utterly useless. . .

There is a farm expression for useless things -- they are as useless as ____ on a boar.  That is probably about as far as I need to take that.  You get my drift.  There are things that might be a little beneficial but are unnecessary and then there are those things that are a complete waste.  I wonder if that is not where we are headed with the Pastoral Office.  It is not simply optional and not essential to many, it is a complete waste and useless to others.  Still others might find the pastor to be downright opposed to the Church and faith.  Sad to say, some of them are Lutherans.

Protestants have always derived the pastoral office from the priesthood of believers and rendered it a benefit (when the preacher is good) but not essential.  Anyone can preach and administer the sacred ordinances and, among some, these duties are passed around among the people.  The functions may be important but not the office.  Preaching is all well and good but who preaches is not all that important -- there is not much required of that preacher except an internal calling and an aptitude.

Although this is not the Lutheran perspective, some Lutherans hold to a rather functional view of the ministry -- ministry is not an office but what is done and the doing is divinely appointed although who does it and how it is done is a thing indifferent.  At least that is pretty much what I get from the Wisconsin Synod.  They value the office as function very highly but the ministers themselves are really just lay people with a paycheck.  It is not orderly (and Germans love order) to have everyone doing these things, so the priesthood elects one to act on behalf of all -- not of God necessarily but of all the priesthood.  That has been some of the tension that contributed to the rift between Wisconsin and Missouri.

Missouri is clear in theology.  The office is not simply optional or essential (That we may obtain this faith, the Ministry of Teaching the Gospel and administering the Sacraments was instituted.  ACV).  The office is not the delegation of the priesthood of the baptized but is a divine creation and those who fill it derive not from the assembly that calls them but from Christ.  They are successors of the apostolate and those on whom the Church has elected, trained, and examined and the Spirit breathed -- all manifested in a moment in the laying on of the hands of the presbyterate (or episcopate, depending upon your polity).  In theory the priesthood of believers exercises its role in the choice or acceptance of the pastor but not in deciding whether or not to have one.  But in practice, the pastor can still seem like a mere hireling -- nice to have but not essential -- or at least treated as such.

In an age of shrinking budget, many congregations are rethinking the value of the office and whether a pastor can be rented on the cheap as opposed to outright purchase with extended warranty.  The end result of this is to treat the office as function rather than office and to treat the pastor as beneficial but not quite essential.  Perhaps even worse, it makes the pastor into a entrepreneur or artisan who builds his own congregation or rents out his skills to those who want them.  Now there is function to the extreme!  It also means that the means of grace can be treated as the tools of the minister and located in him rather than Christ's gifts to the Church which the pastor administers on Christ's behalf.  He can offer them online in virtual sacraments and it already seems that the people are not sure there is any substantive or real difference between hearing something online or in person.  The pandemic has accelerated the idea that along with church, clergy are not necessarily essential.

Professor John Pless told the story of an Englishman overheard telling another that he was “as useless as a clergyman.”   My own story is of a wedding reception which I attended after presiding at the marriage rite only to have one of the guests tell me at my table, over appetizers no less, that pastors are blood sucking leaches."  In either case the spiritual but not religious hardly have need for clergy and the world even less.  The image illustrates how the role of the clergy has come to be seen and valued in our society and perhaps even in the Church.  After all, in a church that has no set doctrine, views online as the same as in person, and caters to the whims of the individual, any clergy may be too many.  Plus, when there is no mediator between God and man or need for any grace to be sacramentally conveyed, what role does the clergy play in a religion of feelings?  You can feed from whatever trough suits you or none at all -- since you are the arbiter of truth anyway.

Yes, I will admit.  Some we have done to ourselves as a group suffering for the sexual sins of the few and the outlandish behavior of others.  But mostly we don't value the things of God and so we do not value the bearer of God's things either.  Protestants certainly come by this conclusion naturally -- that clergy is nice but not necessary.  Lutherans should not agree to it at all even though some of us do.  In the end, the role of the clergy and their popularity and support is tied to whether we think they are necessary, affordable, and useful -- no matter what God says about it.  And that is why it is sooooo sad.

Economic, post-pandemic lessons applied, and an inherent suspicion of clergy along with the clergy's own witless and foolish administration of the office have all combined to suggest that a pastor, if you get a good one, might be worth it, but not necessarily...