The Ministry of the Congregation

What the pastors from whom I have been learning talk about most is not their own ministry, but the ministry of their congregation. What focuses their attention and anchors their interest is their congregation, their people—who they are, how they are living, what they together are doing. When I listen to these pastors, what I hear them talking about is the way in which their "being with" their people has given them their ministries.

These are pastors who have fallen in love with their people because they have seen in them corporately and individually the Christian life embodied. For them, it is the quality and depth of their people's worship that make it possible for them as pastors to lead worship with integrity. It is the people's care for one another that makes it possible for them to be caregivers as pastors. It is the people's engagement in the church's mission that enables the pastors to lead the congregation in its mission.

It is the congregation's ecclesial imagination that over time gives rise to the pastor's pastoral imagination. It is the congregation's ecclesial intelligence that is the source for the pastor's pastoral intelligence. What these pastors tell me is that whatever imagination and intelligence they as pastors may have, it has come to them as a gift given to them—quietly, almost unwittingly, over time—by God in and through the people of faith who make up their congregations.

Ecclesial imagination is the way of seeing and being that emerges when a community of faith, together as a community, comes increasingly to share the knowledge of God and to live a way of abundant life—not only in church but also in the many contexts in which they live their daily lives. Ecclesial imagination emerges among the people themselves, fostering a way of seeing and being that is in some ways different in content, quality and character from that which prevails in the culture surrounding them.

The people talk just a little differently than most. The assumptions they make about themselves and others are not quite the same as the conventional wisdom. They do not pretend to know too much—about others, about themselves or about God. They are more eager than most to listen and to learn. They possess a kind of humility before reality that enables them to be truly attentive to it.

When troubles come or things go wrong in one way or another, they don't necessarily panic in the way others do—or even as they themselves might have done at an earlier time. While they are not necessarily all that optimistic, they are nonetheless a deeply hopeful lot. They invest in their youth and they build for the future, whether they expect to live long enough to benefit from it themselves or not. They seem generous, more likely to give of themselves—and not only of their money but also of their time, their patience, their care.