Being Overwhelmed

Pastoral imagination can only in part be brought to the ministry, because deep and sustained experience within the actual exercise of pastoral ministry itself is essential to its ultimate emergence and maturation. But however it comes into being and however differently it manifests itself in very different people serving very different kinds of congregations, I think that we would consistently find that something like the kind of imagination I have been trying to describe lies at the core of almost every good ministry. Without this gyroscope, it is difficult for pastors to keep their balance in the midst of all that is required of them and all that happens to them, for good and for ill.

I have talked with several groups of ministers about these ideas of pastoral imagination and pastoral intelligence. From them I have gotten two basic responses. One response finds this way of thinking very helpful. Many pastors say that it gives them a language with which to understand both the complexity and the coherence of the ministry. It helps them understand why pastoral ministry is simultaneously so difficult and so satisfying. It helps them to see that all the many pieces involved in carrying it out are not just shards to be reassembled like broken crystal, but rather essential currents that somehow gather, by the power of the Spirit, into a coherent way of being.

And for many it validates their own strong sense that pastoral ministry does, in fact, require the very best they have to give—their best thought, their full energy, their deepest engagement. It affirms that pastoral ministry requires real strength of every kind. And these pastors are glad when someone says that, because in our society—and even in the church—the malignant assumption that pastoral ministry does not really demand or require very much surreptitiously undermines both our legitimate expectations of and our sense of gratitude for the Christian ministry.

The second response is really the flip side of the first, and this is one I typically get from seminary students and new ministers—ironically, especially ones whom I sense to be particularly promising. For them, these ideas can be a bit intimidating. "If that's what it takes to do ministry well," they say, "there is no way I can ever do it! I can't live up to that." A high view of pastoral ministry—of its significance in and for the church and the world, of the importance of doing it well, of understanding all that is involved in it and required of a person to do it—can be so daunting as to be overwhelming.

Actually, those who make this second response are right. Ministry is overwhelming. But let us think for a moment about what it means to be overwhelmed. Sometimes we are overwhelmed by the sheer hugeness or complexity of something. We can't get our arms around it. We can't figure it out. We are unable to organize it or to bring it under control. We are overwhelmed in a way that makes us feel small, weak, and inadequate. On the other hand, "overwhelmings" happen in other ways as well. On the shore of a mountain lake at sunset, we are overwhelmed by beauty. At the birth of a grandchild, we are overwhelmed with joy. At a low point in our lives, we are overwhelmed by unexpected generosity.

The British theologian David Ford says that "Jesus Christ is an embodiment of multiple overwhelmings. He was immersed in the River Jordan and then driven by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted. He announced the kingdom of God as something worth everything else, a pearl beyond price, a welcome beyond anything we could deserve, a feast beyond our wildest desires. At the climax of his life he agonized in prayer in Gethsemane, he was betrayed, deserted, tortured, and crucified, and he died crying 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' Then came the resurrection, the most disorienting and transformative overwhelming of all."

The life of Christian faith, says Ford, is itself the most profound experience there is of being overwhelmed. In baptism we "take on an identity shaped by the overwhelmings of creation, death, resurrection, and the Holy Spirit. We have also entered a community that spans the generations and relates us to … perhaps two billion people alive today who are identified as Christians.… This is the dynamic of being shaped by being overwhelmed."