Calling & Character
William H. Willimon
If we hold
to the ‘priesthood of all believers' doctrine, do we need separate ethics for pastors?
If so, what are they?
The
Protestant tradition has long emphasized the doctrine (Biblical or not) that
all Christians are qualified and capable of performing the same sacraments and
roles as priests do in the Catholic tradition. Martin Luther puts it this way:
Now we, who have been baptized, are
all uniformly priests in virtue of that very fact. The only addition received
by the priests is the office of preaching, and even this with our consent. […]
Thus it says in 1 Peter 2, “Ye are an elect race, a royal priesthood, and a
priestly kingdom.” It follows that all of us who are Christians are also
priests. […] The priesthood is simply the ministry of the word. So in 1
Corinthians 4 it says: “Let a man so account of us as ministers of Christ and
stewards of the mysteries of God.””[1]
Willimon is writing in the Protestant tradition, and after
nearly 500 years there is still much of Luther to be found in Willimon’s Methodist
theology of the clergy. He writes, “My
starting point for thinking about the ordained leadership of the church is
baptism, the ministry of all Christians for which ordained, pastoral ministry
is but a species of a broader genus called the ministry of the baptized.”[2] Whereas Luther must argue against a special
class of Christian ministers in order to raise the moral bar and stop many
abuses in the church, Willimon is arguing for at least some special treatment
of pastors and ministers in order to raise the moral bar and stop many abuses
in the church. He goes on to say that his book “seeks to highlight those
ethical challenges that are peculiar to clergy, the morality and virtues that
adhere to the practice of Christian leadership today and the way in which
clerical character informs those challenges.”[3]
In light of
what Luther says, I appreciate Willimon’s emphasis throughout his book on the
pastor’s call to faithfully preach the Word.
If pastors are meant to be believers who are called to serve the rest of
the priesthood, their most difficult and thankless tasks are to offend people
with Scripture, to expose their own failures and messes, and to confront the
most embedded cultural sins of our time. Perhaps this is the ethic from Calling & Character that pastors
most need to hear.
As Willimon points out, all the
ethical issues that pastors seem to struggle with most—such as inappropriate
relations with churchgoers, financial irresponsibility and impropriety, or
obsession with church growth and ‘success’—are merely role confusion.[4] If we think our job is to meet people’s needs
as much as possible, or to sacrifice ourselves to the point of burnout and
embitterment, or to cater to the demands of the nominal masses from the pulpit,
we will inevitably fail. But if we keep in mind the core of the gospel and
remember that Jesus is the head of the Church, then everything we do will be
aimed at creating “love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere
faith.”[5]
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