Yet, pastors may find it more difficult to pray by themselves and for themselves. Prayer so easily becomes a professional responsibility that pastors begin to forget their responsibility to cultivate a personal life of prayer. How will we as pastors make time and space for regular, disciplined prayer? Only as we do, will we remember our true identity in Jesus Christ. If we don't, we will wither on the vine.
Pastors read the Bible all the time. They read the Bible as they prepare sermons and Sunday School lessons. Nearly every day, they mine the text for new insights. They want church members to grow in Bible knowledge. They themselves know that they must know the Bible. If anyone in the church has a question about the Bible, the pastor is supposed to have the answer. The pastor doesn't have the luxury of saying, "Go read a commentary," or "Go consult a Bible scholar." We are the congregation's commentary and Bible scholar.
Yet, pastors can get so busy reading the Bible for professional purposes that they no longer read it slowly and carefully and meditatively by themselves and for themselves. Reading the Bible becomes just another weekly task to be checked off, rather than a daily discipline of opening oneself to God. How will we as pastors make time and space to listen for God's living Word to us in Scripture? Only as we do, will we stay rooted in our pastoral identity in Christ. If we don't, our preaching will soon become stale and dead.
Pastors think theologically all the time, don't they? They answer people's questions about God and what we believe as a church. They know the traditions of the faith better than anyone else in the congregation. Yet, pastors can neglect their theological responsibilities. They can find themselves using words that they themselves no longer understand—formulations about the faith that are as predictable and safe as they are superficial and empty. Pastors can forget that a living faith must struggle to hear God's living Word anew each day.
When will we as pastors make time and space to keep thinking about the big questions of faith? When will we give attention to the great theological insights of the past and present? When will we grapple with the church's confessions and the church's great theologians—that help us to think better thoughts than we could on our own? For the truth is that no matter how bright we are, we are always beginners. We desperately need the help of those who have gone before us and who have thought about the faith more deeply than we.
Pastors may not pray as faithfully as they wish, but most of us have a discipline of daily prayer. Pastors may not meditate on Scripture as faithfully as they wish, but most of us have a daily discipline of Bible reading. But the truth is that many pastors quit reading books of theology, once they leave seminary. They settle for easy, popular literature that has an immediate pay-off for a sermon illustration or a new church program, but that does not demand much of them intellectually. Unless we as pastors reform our ways, we will not feed the people in our congregations the risen, living Christ, but just our outdated ideas. We will soon be giving them stones, instead of bread—and we ourselves will become hard-hearted.
