So, What Do I Actually Do?
Pastor, teacher, author and leader are different ways of pursuing the same calling.
That question is becoming increasingly difficult for me to answer in one sentence.
Am I a pastor? Yes. A preacher? Certainly. An author? Increasingly so. A teacher and lecturer? That has been a significant part of my life as well. A denominational leader? Yes, that is part of my present role.
The easiest answer is probably that I have spent most of my life helping people understand and live out the Christian faith. The setting has simply changed from time to time.
I have done that from pulpits and classrooms, around board tables and in conversations over coffee. I have planted a church, pastored churches, taught theological students, developed leaders and served in denominational leadership. And now I am doing more of it through writing.
I Have Always Been a Teacher
Even when I am preaching, I tend to teach.
I enjoy taking a passage of Scripture, working through what it actually says, asking the questions that sit behind it and then trying to make it understandable. Over the years I have had the privilege of teaching subjects ranging from Old and New Testament and Christian faith through to leadership, management, preaching and ministry formation.
But the subject matter has never been the most important part.
The real question is: What happens in the life of the person who is learning this?
Information matters. Theology matters. Careful interpretation matters. But Christian teaching is intended to form people. Jesus didn’t tell us simply to communicate information. He called us to make disciples.
That distinction has become increasingly important to me.
It is possible to know quite a lot about Christianity without allowing any of it to change us. We can collect information, learn the language and become very good at discussing ideas, while remaining largely the same people underneath it all.
That is not what I want from teaching, and it is not what I want from my own learning either.
Writing Has Become Another Way of Teaching
For many years, much of my writing happened because I had to preach on Sunday.
A sermon forced me to think. I would wrestle with a text, write, rewrite, preach it and then move on to the next week. But sometimes an idea wouldn’t go away. There was more to explore. A sermon became a series. A series became pages of material. Eventually some of those ideas began becoming books.
I discovered that writing allows me to have a different kind of conversation.
When I preach, I may have thirty or forty minutes with a congregation. A book allows someone to stop, reread a paragraph, put it down, come back tomorrow and continue the conversation. A blog does something similar. It gives an idea somewhere to keep growing after Sunday is over.
I like that.
And Then There Is Leadership
Leadership has also occupied a significant part of my life.
Church leadership can be wonderfully rewarding and occasionally very complicated. People matter. Mission matters. Decisions matter. Leadership often requires holding all three together.
Over the years I have become increasingly interested in the kind of leadership that develops other people rather than simply gathering responsibility around the leader. I want people to grow. I want younger leaders to discover that they can do things they didn’t think they could do. I want pastors to flourish. I want churches to become healthier.
And I want Christians to understand that ministry is not something performed by a small group of professionals on behalf of everyone else.
The church is the people of God.
Leadership should therefore help people become who God is calling them to become, rather than simply making them better supporters of the leader.
These Things Belong Together
So when someone asks what I do, perhaps I don’t really need to choose between author, speaker, teacher, preacher and leader.
They belong together.
They are different ways of pursuing much the same calling. I want to understand the Christian faith more deeply, communicate it clearly, and help people live it faithfully.
That is what much of my life has been about.
It is also what RevLex is about.