Pastor Prime, Derek, and Alistair

Pastor Prime, Derek, and Alistair Begg. On Being a Pastor: Understanding Our Calling and Work. Chicago: Moody, 2004. Under no circumstances, ever, ever become a pastor. Be a good Christian, be a member of the Christian community and a local Christian Church, but turn away from the profession itself of becoming a pastor. So say Derek Prime and Alistair Begg in their text on Being a Pastor: Understanding Our Calling and Work.

In other words, being a pastor is like being an actor, a doctor, or running your own business -- if you can think of any other profession that you can do, that would make you happy, another profession you would also feel fulfilled in accomplishing on a daily basis -- do that, don't become a pastor! Being a pastor is more than a job. It is a vocation in the truest, first sense of the word, and a calling from God. It is a life and a lifestyle.

Also, more often than not the social demands of being a pastor take one away from the theological focus that probably drew the individual to the ministry in the first place. As a pastor, God comes first, then one's congregants and their relationships with God, and then, and only then comes one's own spiritual needs. Jesus told the physician to heal himself, in other words, that quite often it is difficult for the individual to turn the tools of the profession one practices on others upon one's own life.

This is also true of those who seek the call of the ministry, and those who feel the call. As a pastor, individuals, say Prime and Begg, will always be coming to you for advice and wisdom you may not feel qualified to give. It may be tempting to pass judgment when you should not, and not to pass judgment when you ought.

It is necessary to have a secure sense of one's religious self and soul as well as to simply give, give, give, to be the most effective of pastors. One must have a moral center that is why people appeal to their pastor for guidance. In other words, the physician must be healthy in his own moral and spiritual judgment before the pastor can dispense spiritual healing to others.

This is a brave book, because the ministry of all Christian churches feel themselves in a state of drought -- beset from all sides, it is tempting to seek to proselyte, to draw in converts to becoming pastors, rather than to counsel potential pastors to look within themselves and to ask if they 'have what it takes' to oversee a community of Christians.

Psychologist, social worker, friend, theologian, confessor, and traffic cop -- a pastor may have to play all roles, all of the time in his vocational life, and then come home and prove a father, friend, and husband. On top of all of these many 'hats' he must wear, or collars he must don, the pastor must also be good individual Christian that has a fulfilling, to use the words of the author, spiritually 'fed' life with Christ. Not an easy task indeed.

One of the potential problems of this book, however, for a layperson is that the concerns of the book are so pastor-centric. True, it helps other.