Ordained to proclaim.
Gerhard Forde on the pastor’s role in the church of God.
Near the end of Gerhard Forde’s treatise, Theology Is for Proclamation, he moves to draw the assortment of themes and discussions revolving around the event of the preached word to a succinct and sufficient close. In so doing, he shares a few comments on the nature and purpose of the church, its ministry, and those who are ordained to carry out the office of public witness to the “mystery of godliness,” which is made manifest through the proclamation of Christ alone, “the hope of glory” (1 Tim. 3:16; Col. 1:27). It is in this way, then, that we can better understand what it means and what is involved when one is “ordained to the ministry.” A frequent error occurs when we assume that the one ordained has somehow attained or acquired some sort of higher level of spirituality or divine knowledge that qualifies them for this office. As a consequence, occupational ministry, so to speak, is at times viewed as vocationally superior. Forde’s comments in the following excerpt serve to refute this misreckoning of the pastoral office. He writes:
To be called and ordained to the public office is to be called through the church to give public voice to the Word of God. It is not the office holder as such who transcends the congregation by elevation to a higher order, but the Word of God. The only ultimate defense against anticlericalism is the proper preaching of this Word so that the gospel is heard. To be called and ordained is to take up this public office. The ordained pastor is not a guru or a shrink or a perpetual optimist or nice person, but a public proclaimer. The ordinand, therefore, is to be properly examined and ordered to do the task. One is not called to this public office to peddle private opinions, but to serve, proclaim, and care for the public witness and theology of the church in a particular time and place, to have the guts (or the Spirit, in theological terms), to say it and do it. To that end the church through the holders of this office lays on hands, prays, and invokes the Spirit on those called so to do. (186)
Rather than regarding pastors as sages through whom the light of truth can only be dispensed, we are to see this office as the God-ordained means by which his church is ordered. This, I think, is what Paul conveyed to Titus when he reminded him that he had been left in Crete to put the church “into order,” specifically by “appoint[ing] elders in every town as I directed you” (Titus 1:5). These elders, of course, were those who had “the good deposit” of the gospel entrusted to them, just as Titus and Timothy had, likewise, received it (2 Tim. 1:14; 2:2). The point is, that public witnesses of “the church of the living God,” that is the “pillar and buttress of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15), pastors and preachers are not in a position of proclaiming their ideas or peddling private opinions, as Forde put it. Instead, they are ordained to speak nothing but the words of God’s gospel. They are, as Paul puts it, to “preach the word” (2 Tim. 4:2).
Grace and peace to you.
Works cited:
Gerhard Forde, Theology Is for Proclamation (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1990).