In Briefing #365, Gavin Perkins wrote an Up Front piece which argued that “the good pastor is actually primarily an evangelist”. He argued for this on the basis that Jesus’ parable in Luke 15 talks about a shepherd who leaves the 99 in order to find the one who is lost, and on the basis that Jesus saw the helpless crowds in Matthew 9 as “sheep without a shepherd”. He also reminded us of the example of our hero Richard Baxter in this regard (author of The Reformed Pastor).
While there is no doubt that Baxter’s ministry was profoundly evangelistic (in lots of ways we should learn from), and while I have no gripe with pastors being urged to be evangelistically minded in
their work, I do want to challenge the assertion that evangelism of the lost is the primary work of the pastor (or, as Gavin says in his conclusion, the pastor should be an evangelist “first and foremost”).
It seems to me that Gavin’s bold conclusion rests on two texts that cannot carry the weight of his argument. (This is assuming we’re agreed the life of Baxter can only ever be illustrative rather than
authoritative.) Luke 15 sees Jesus describe the joy of God in the repentance of sinners. The illustration he uses is compelling, but clearly was not given as a mandate for the role of Christian pastors/shepherds. Not to mention the fact that even Jesus’ own illustration seems to assume that the primary role of the shepherd is the care of the 99. The pursuit of the one is the exceptional work of the loving shepherd in Jesus’ story.
Matthew 9, on the other hand, does remind us that Jesus sees his sheep as being those who are not yet following him as well as those who are (which, I suspect, is the significance of John 10:16 as well). But again, I feel compelled to ask whether a passage that talks about Jesus’ unique mission to Israel can be pressed into the service of an argument about the first priority of Christian pastors. Might it not even be the case that to claim that Jesus’ primary purpose is captured by these verses is reductionistic? I am willing to concede that Matthew 9 serves as a reminder that Jesus’ elect sheep are not, as yet, all gathered into his pen. By extension, the Christian pastor—Jesus’ under-shepherd—ought to share his concern for those sheep that as yet do not believe. But can we really find in these verses the conclusion that, first and foremost, the work of the Christian pastor is to seek out the lost sheep?
Surely when we turn to the rest of the New Testament, we discover that the language of shepherding, when applied to Christian leadership, consistently assumes the context of the Christian church. On my reading, this is the case in Acts 20:28-29, Ephesians 4:11 and 1 Peter 5:2-4. Moreover, even though Gavin may find texts in the later New Testament urging the pastor to “do the work of an evangelist” and so on, it seems to me that he would struggle to find a single passage that might support the sizeable claim he has made (that this role is primary). In my view, his argument fails to do justice to what the whole counsel of God tells us about who a shepherd is and what God calls them to.
Finally, can I say that from where this humble pastor sits, this argument actually matters a great deal. In a day when ‘missional church’ is the flavour of the month and pastors are being urged to be ‘missionaries’ to their suburbs, I think it would be a tragedy of colossal proportions if all the shepherds God has raised up in our churches did what Gavin urges them to do—leaving the believers to look after themselves. Make a careless theological error here and a whole generation of God’s people may suffer.
