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259 - The Pastor as Evangelist & Pastor as Person: Maintaining Personal Integrity in the Choices and Challenges of Ministry |
The Pastor as Evangelist
By Richard S. Armstrong
Philadelphia, Westminster, 1984. 202 pp. $9.95.
Pastor as Person: Maintaining Personal Integrity
in the Choices and Challenges of Ministry
By Gary L. Harbaugh
Minneapolis, Augsburg, 1984. 172 pp. $8.95.
These books constitute additional evidence, if any is needed, that the genre of pastoral theology is in the ascendancy. Increasing numbers of publications in the religious field undertake to reflect upon some aspect of the pastoral office and its practice. Both Armstrong and Harbaugh make useful contributions to this contemporary body of theological literature, though in quite different ways.
Armstrong is concerned to help pastors come to terms with the evangelistic dimension of the pastoral office. Acknowledging a wide variety of negative stereotypes of evangelistic ministry, he explores a variety of contemporary proposals for its theological reformulation. This discussion is important, not because it establishes a normative definition, but because it delineates a rich variety of ways in which that reformulation is being undertaken.
After exploring some of the barriers that tend to stand in the way of
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260 - The Pastor as Evangelist & Pastor as Person: Maintaining Personal Integrity in the Choices and Challenges of Ministry |
pastors devoting much time or attention to evangelism, and after reiterating the theme of his earlier Service Evangelism-that personal faith is the critical issue for all evangelism-Armstrong examines the specifies of the pastor's practice of evangelism. This involves a look at the various relationships of the pastor that provide evangelistic opportunity and a variety of "contextual factors." These "contextual factors" turn out to be the various ages of people with whom a pastor has a significant relationship, the various ways in which a pastor is in communication with persons, and the various circumstances (for example, cultural, personal) which affect how one relates most effectively to persons. A final chapter on the evangelistic style of the pastor gives a number of helpful proposals about how faith-sharing conversations can be initiated and encouraged.
The strengths of this book are in its early and concluding chapters. The central section, preoccupied with "contextual factors," comes close to violating a dictum which Armstrong explicitly affirms: "If everything is evangelism, then nothing is evangelism" (p. 57). Too many of the matters discussed in this section have to do with the pastor's general role as proclaimer and nurturer of faith within the community of faith. Granted that those within the community of faith need the evangel again and again, by Armstrong's own account evangelism needs to be conceived as a discrete ministry to the unchurched or nominally churched. Yet this central part of the book tends to lose that focus, allowing the pastor as evangelist to be construed as everything that the pastor does. Nonetheless, the grounding of the whole enterprise in actual pastoral experience means this book is imbued with the same practical wisdom that characterizes all of Armstrong's work and writing.
Rather than dealing with a particular dimension of the pastoral office, Gary Harbaugh has undertaken an important inquiry into ways in which the general practice of the office can be both fruitless and self-destructive. On the basis of what be describes as a "(w)holistic" model of personhood, Harbaugh discusses the pastor as a physical, thinking, feeling, and relating person who confronts the challenge of integrating all dimensions of self spiritually in and through the basic choices made in ministry.
Discussing each dimension of personhood in turn, Harbaugh illustrates the ways in which challenges arise for pastors through fictionalized case studies. These provide concrete reference points for understanding the physical manifestations of stress, the perceptions of the pastoral role by pastor and parishioners, the dynamics which tend to suppress feelings, and the quality of the personal and pastoral relationships in which pastors stand. Of particular importance in the discussion of relationships are issues surrounding pastoral authority and power.
The unique contribution of the book is the concluding chapter which argues that successful confrontation of the challenges in each area of personhood requires not only the recognition that each area impinges on all the others, but also the awareness that their integration is a
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261 - The Pastor as Evangelist & Pastor as Person: Maintaining Personal Integrity in the Choices and Challenges of Ministry |
theological and spiritual task. That confrontation happens, for Harbaugh, as the necessity of making sometimes risky choices is undertaken in the context of having been chosen by God in Christ.
Pastors will recognize themselves in Harbaugh's book. They will also be challenged to deal with the dilemmas of personhood that, while not unique, are special to the pastor. However, despite his concern to make sure that dealing with issues of personhood is done with theological integrity, Harbaugh fails to introduce any extended reflection on the office of pastor. Thus some important questions receive little attention; for example, how the images of pastor as shepherd and servant might be understood in relation to the "(w)holistic" model of personhood. Still, with keen interdisciplinary insight, Harbaugh has done pastors and pastoral ministry a service by carrying the discussion of the pastor as person to a new level of comprehensiveness and theological sensitivity.
Taken together, these books by Armstrong and Harbaugh throw into relief a particular need in the future development of the genre of pastoral theology. It is the need to broaden the theological base from which issues and themes of pastoral ministry are discussed. While both books have important and generally well-defined theological starting points, they do not avail themselves of a sufficiently broad range of theological themes. Armstrong places most of his theological stress on a particular understanding of faith as gift, while Harbaugh finds his core theological insights in a theology of the cross. Without quarreling with the importance of either theological starting point for their respective enterprises, the introduction of other systematic theological concerns would give a richer perspective that both currently lack.
D. Cameron Murchison, Jr.
Union Theological Seminary
Richmond, Virginia