The Calling Of The Preacher -- By: Victor Gordon
Journal: Reformation and Revival
Volume: RAR 09:1 (Winter 2000)
Article: The Calling Of The Preacher
Author: Victor Gordon
RAR 9:1 (Winter 2000) p. 57
The Calling Of The Preacher
God blessed me with a call and wise counsel. It was the fall of my junior year at Stanford University. I was heavily involved in high school ministry with Young Life and went to a weekend leadership conference at Mount Hermon in the beautiful Santa Cruz mountains. I had never considered being a pastor, but before the weekend was over, there was nothing else I could do with my life. God made it crystal clear, and I have never doubted in the twenty-seven years since that this was his will for my life.
Rev. Earl Palmer, then pastor of First Presbyterian Church, Berkeley, was a speaker that weekend, which seems so long ago, and yet, to me, as if it was yesterday. Palmer’s style and model of ministry attracted me, and the Lord used him to call me into the pastorate. Shortly after that milestone weekend, I made an appointment with Palmer in his office at Berkeley. I am sure he has long since forgotten our meeting, but what he said marked me forever. After I shared my story, he affirmed God’s work in my life and offered this piece of counsel: “A pastor has to love two things. He has to love to study and he has to love people.”
A quarter century of searching the Scriptures and ministry experience has convinced me that Palmer was exactly right. Every congregation needs at least one person whose passion and priority are to exegete the Scriptures and to exegete the congregation and bring them together. This person is the pastor. The entire pastoral ministry can be
RAR 9:1 (Winter 2000) p. 58
summed up in this: knowing and loving the Word of God while knowing and loving your parishoners, and working in the power of the Spirit to bring the two together to build the people up in Christ for the glory of God. A pastor is called to bring God and his Word to people and to bring people to God and his Word.
This, then, is the unique calling of the pastor. One who is called, gifted, equipped and prepared, committed and disciplined to study the Word and to love people: that is the job description of a biblical pastor! Pastors should be unique in their congregation in respect to calling, giftedness, preparation, commitment and discipline. All of this is for the purpose of bringing the Word of God and people together. This is the only thing the pastor can do for the congregation which the congregation cannot do for itself. Someone must be called of God to serve in this capacity for each local congregation.
How tragic it is, then, to read the words of Eugene Peterson:
American pastors are abandoning their posts, left and right, and at an alarming rate. They are not leaving their churches and getting other jobs. Congregat...
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