Raising up pastors. . .

Roman Catholics have gone to having "vocation directors" to assist in the consideration by men and formation of those men as priests.  I am not sure how successful that has been.  Though nearly every diocese has one of those thingies, the seminaries of most dioceses are pretty empty.  We have not quite gone to that in the Missouri Synod but we are headed there.  Our seminaries employ "admission counselors" to aid and support those considering the pastoral vocation.  Again, look at the declining enrollment and you can quickly figure out this is not the solution either.

It was once said in Rome that good priests inspired young men to become priests.  We said the same thing.  Good pastors inspire young men to become pastors.  So does that mean we are short of good pastors since we seem to be struggling to recruit young men to be pastors?  I am not ready to go there -- yet.  But I do think that there is something else that is missing.  You do not recruit young men to be pastors by inviting them for coffee but it probably does not hurt.  What is hurting is that we have come to a point where we are not sure that pastors should be strong men.  No one wants to be recruited to a job that is offered to those who cannot do anything else nor do they desire a vocation where it does not require or compel them to be anything but themselves.  Yet this seems to be precisely the problem.

In our congregation we seem to value the flexible over those with conviction and the get along pastors over those who would die on a hill for an important cause.  It would be like training a fighting force to win a stalemate at best or to lose without shame.  I fear that we are not sure as a church body that we want strong pastors and so we do not encourage young men to a strong career but rather to a weak one.  Who wants that?  When I began my pre-seminary education at St. John's in Winfield, KS, I was not sure I was smart enough or strong enough or gifted enough to be a pastor.  All around me there were young men who were better than I was at Greek or speaking or in their piety.  I persevered because of the strong encouragement of professors such as Dr. Edward F. Peters or Dr. H. Andrew Harnack.  I kept at it because all around me were men of conviction and I wanted to be one.

Sadly, we are afraid of people of conviction today and so we offer to young men not a strong vocation but a weak one.  It is not simply feminization that has afflicted the Church but the promotion of toleration, compromise, popularity, preference, and desire over doctrine and truth and conviction.  We are hampered in our recruitment of young men for the office because we have made this office into something less than strong.  It is not about accessibility or approachability but about conviction.  I well remember the advice I got -- don't become a pastor because it is something you can do; become a pastor because you it is something you must do.

I read an article which suggested that there was a time in history when celibacy was considered less of an impediment to recruiting than the office itself.  In other words, celibacy was not the liability but the priesthood was.  Now it is certainly the other way around.  The priesthood is the goal and celibacy is the impediment some see to that goal.  To put this in Lutheran terms, do we value the life we seek more than the vocation or are we willing to sacrifice the life we want (in worldly terms) for the holy calling of pastor (the calling is holy even if we as pastors are not!).  Perhaps it is true that we have not held up the sacrifice as the very magnet to the calling.  If that is the case, it is no wonder that we are struggling.  Men value a challenge.  Give them one.  The pastoral office is not for the many but for the few, for those who must be pastors and not for those who might.  As the sainted Dr. Korby once said, "God ordains men; be one!"