It Is Not Good For Man To Be Alone | Lessons from the Last 15
Ministry is unimaginable apart from community, not just in a community, but with a community. The rugged individualist, John Wayne, and the celebrity pastor are not models to emulate. Even the Lone Ranger had Tonto. Ministry doesn’t begin isolated in the pastor’s study, but in the heart of the Triune Community. The Father-Breathed-out-Word generates, regenerates, and sustains everything. Old heretical modalism gave the three persons separate roles and tidy job descriptions, one at a time. Glorious orthodoxy recognizes an interpenetrating investment, even dancing perichoritic persons in one God. God is the source of ministry, moved to compassion for everyone, from Nineveh to Nazareth and to every nation.
The subjunctive “let us make man in our image, after our likeness” finds fruitful fulfillment in “I will make him a helper fit for him” (Genesis 1.26 and 2.18). God is One, but he is not lonely or alone. Even the great monotheistic creed of Israel, the shema, “Hear O Israel the Lord is echad” is coupled with “And the two shall be echad” (Deuteronomy 6.4 and Genesis 2.24). God’s oneness is like the oneness a husband and wife share.
“Ministry is unimaginable apart from community, not just in a community, but with a community.”
Throughout the history of Christ’s church, the pastor’s spouse had varied job descriptions. Saint Peter had a mother-in-law, and there is only one way to get one of those (Luke 4.38-41). We don’t know much about Mrs. St. Peter, but we do know that she existed, and probably deserved sainthood as much if not more than her rocky husband. In the table of duties found in the pastoral epistles, Paul clearly explains why a presbyter (pastor/priest/elder) ought to be a one-woman-man. If their message is going to be the covenantal fidelity of God, their lives should bear witness, though imperfect, to the same.
The Western Church has been inconsistent on the issue of clerical marriage, at times embracing and other times prohibiting. The Eastern Church has been more consistent. Priests are able to have holy matrimony and holy orders, as long as matrimony precedes orders. The role of the priest’s spouse has significance and even her own title in many Eastern Churches. Presbytera, the feminine form of “elder” or “priest,” is often shortened to the friendly nickname, “Pres” or “Presby.” In the Russian Church, she is called “Matushka” or “mother.” Father Stephen Freeman writes in his blog, “To a degree, as the priest is a spiritual father in a congregation, so his wife is a spiritual mother. And like mothers and fathers elsewhere, those roles get expressed in different ways.”
There is nothing more evident to me, that when Trinity called me, God called us. They didn’t need two of the same, they needed vive la différence in unity. Of course this is even more fundamentally true in the Hoff home than in the house of God. The intimate connection between home and church is clear in the Scriptures. The home is a little church. The church a great home. The home is where we are washed and nurtured at a table and where we learn that absolution is for our real down-to-earth lives. The word dwells richly in our dwellings on Mondays through Saturdays. And, the church is where we are family with a generous Father. We might not have the same family tree, but we have the same destiny. We’ve come from different tribes and parties and places, but we are going to the Kingdom together.
“The home is a little church. The church a great home. The home is where we are washed and nurtured at a table and where we learn that absolution is for our real down-to-earth lives. ”
I’m trying to write descriptively instead of prescriptively. There are single pastors who are effective and healthy. There are pastors whose spouses have primary vocations outside of the local congregation. These are also gifted and gifts to the church. But, they are not alone. Their ministry is also forged in and fueled by community. There are many ways not “to be alone.” The Scriptures and the churches described therein only know elders in plurality. It is not good for elders to be alone. I could write a long treatise on the blessing the Trinity Elders have been to me and to our shared ministry. I could do the same with our staff. I inherited a cadre of devoted servant-hearted staff at Trinity. Mostly part-time, we had very little change in our staff for 13 years! Everything and everybody was rearranged in 2018. Change is a challenge, but because of so many years of their faithful service, the congregation weathered the changes. Space was made for another full-time ministry partner. Trinity is unanimous in recognizing what a gift Kierra has been to our community. It is hard to imagine navigating this last season’s challenges without her.
Without being prescriptive about what is necessary or possible or impossible in other settings, I must bear witness to how these last fifteen years would have been impossible for me without Joy. Nathan without Joy would have ascended into unrealistic vision and expectations leaving the actual congregation in my dream dust. Just as quickly, without Joy I would have descended into despair and darkness, giving ear only to the voices of the critic.
When we lived in Stavanger, Norway while studying at Misjonshøgskolen (School of Mission and Theology), Joy worked in exchange for cafeteria food by editing the English papers written by the African pastors who were also studying there. Joy was pregnant with Christian for nearly the length of the school year. Christian was 11 lbs at birth, so we usually called her “really pregnant.” One day Pastor Lambert and Pastor Mekonen were pointing and laughing at us. When we asked them what they were laughing about they didn’t want to tell us. Come to find out, they had a nickname for pregnant Joy. They called her “Bishop.” When we pried it out of them they finally confessed, “In Africa, the Bishops are fat because they eat better than the pastors.”
No one looking at her would call her “Bishop” anymore. It has been years since she gave birth to our fourth. But, sometimes I still call her “Bishop,” not because of her size, but because of the size of her influence in my life and in the life of others. She helps me believe the truth about our God, and she helps me discern the voices. She learned to listen generously, but she doesn’t take any of my dreams seriously until I’ve mentioned them at least three times. Ultimately, the best dreams have only come true because of her. When I ride an emotional roller coaster, she is waiting for me when I disembark. Doing this alone would have been unimaginable.
Our wedding verse was psalm and prophecy, “O magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together” (Psalm 34.3). “With me” and “together” have made marriage and ministry half as hard and twice as good*.
*lyric from our favorite artist, Sara Groves song “Twice as Good”
Lessons from the Last 15 is a series of articles from Pastor Nathan Hoff on the occasion of his 15th year in ministry at Trinity San Pedro.
“It seems like they need me,” I said pretentiously to a dear family I was visiting in the first congregation I served. Just shy of three years at that Call, I broke the news about our upcoming relocation to Southern California. It was the Fall of 2005, and I had recently received and accepted a new Call to Trinity Lutheran in San Pedro, California. How that family managed not to roll their eyes is more impressive as the years go by. I had a lot to learn.
October 31st marked the 15th anniversary of my installation as pastor at Trinity San Pedro. They didn’t “need” me in the way I thought they might need me. They did need the Gospel, and I needed it too—as desperately as anyone else. I still do and they still do. We are a good match.