The Pastor as Father

by Benjamin Israel Robinson

“Your sons will take the place of your fathers; you will make them princes throughout the land.” Psalm 45:16, NIV

I remember the thrill of being a senior in college. I felt as though things were coming together for me, I was beginning to see connections between theology and psychology and science and history and I began to develop a sense of learnedness and expertise. This led to conflict between my parents and me. I was a free thinker, no longer constrained by their limited and shallow view of the world, and I was unafraid to assert myself at their expense.

On New Years Eve night, 1997, I was about to take my brothers to a youth rally in San Jose when my younger brother began to argue with my father. They went back and forth and the discussion grew more and more heated. I was getting frustrated because we were running late. Finally, I looked at my brother and said, “you’re dead wrong,” and then proceeded to tell him why. Then, in a rare moment of bold indignation, I pointed my finger at my father and said, “and you’re wrong too,” and then proceeded to tell him why. When I finished I looked at my brothers and said, “Get in the car, let’s go,” and so we went.

For a moment I felt righteous, as though I had done a great thing by setting them both straight. But that sense of righteousness quickly morphed into a sense of remorse and godly sorrow as the conviction of the Holy Spirit infiltrated my heart. I felt terrible all the way to our destination. When we arrived, I took my brother aside and told him that we needed to call dad and make up with him before going into the service. We found a phone and I spoke first. “Dad, I was wrong to point my finger at you and tell you that you were wrong. That is not my place and I sincerely apologize.” Then my brother took the phone and apologized also. It was a deep moment of reconciliation between us and our father.

When we went into the service, the pastor recognized us and said, “The Robinson boys are here. Why don’t you guys come up here and lead us in some worship!” My brothers and I took the platform – Mark on the drums, Joshua on the bass, and I on the keyboard – and we led the gathered congregation into a powerful time of worship. But I asked myself after it was all over, “how could I have gone up to that platform and led God’s people in worship if I had not first been reconciled to my father?”

This is a good example of the way in which the church is supposed to function. The church is a household, not a corporation. Households are governed by parents; corporations are run by administrators. The pastor functions in the church the way a father functions in a household. Paul would insist on this in his letter to the Corinthians: “Even though you have ten thousand guardians in Christ, you do not have many fathers, for in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel.” (1 Corinthians 4:15, NIV)

Dallas Willard laments that the church of the West has omitted discipleship from the great commission and replaced it with conversion. He calls this The Great Omission, as his book is aptly titled. We don’t have to stretch our intellects to see his point; committed Christianity is at an all-time low in America. I read somewhere that the average ‘faithful’ American church attender goes to church twice a month. The epidemic of ‘church-hopping’ plagues American Christianity (can you imagine first century disciples Rabbi-hopping?) to the extent that true discipleship is practically non-existent in the church of America.

I see this in the congregation that I pastor and it makes my skin crawl. I had a guy come to me a few months ago and ask my permission to go through a particular process at another local church and I asked him why he felt he needed my permission. He responded, “because you’re my pastor.” I looked at him in disbelief and said, “I am? The only reason I ask that is because you’ve never allowed me to pastor you. You come to church once every three months, you have yet to submit yourself to any discipleship process here in the church, and now you’re asking my permission to submit yourself to a process at another church?” I didn’t say that to him to beat him up, but to encourage him to plug in at his new church and seriously commit to discipleship there.

But I must confess that there is a degree of anger and of indignation that I feel about the whole thing. What’s up with American, consumerist Christians? How many sermons do I have to preach on discipleship to convince people to do this thing right? At times I’ve found myself down-right pissed off at people who are content with a form of godliness, a shell of a Christian life devoid of any real substance. I call ‘em flash fried believers, they’ve been seared on the outside so they look cooked, but on the inside they’re as rare and uncooked as raw meat. They have experienced enough of the power of God to alter their outward appearance, but they haven’t allowed the heat of the gospel to cook them through and through.

One day I said, “God change these people’s hearts! Get a hold of these hard hearted, hecka fake, supposed Christians that don’t want anything deeper than their little pathetic wannabe Christian life.” God loves those complaining sessions, doesn’t he? When I look back on them, I picture him laughing. In my experience he never joins me in my criticism of others. He never jumps in and says, “Yeah, those people are fake, huh?” Instead, he always calls me to change. On this particular day he said to me, “Benjamin, your people will never submit to discipleship until you teach them that you are their father. You must teach them that you are their father!”

I was terrified by this prospect. Tell them that I am their father? How arrogant! How awkward! How presumptuous! I can’t do that. It’s not the way I roll. I would never take it upon myself to assume the role of fatherhood in someone’s life, even if I’ve been invited to do so. Matter of fact, there were already a few young men in the church who called me “Dad,” but I couldn’t bring myself to call them sons. I always responded with the egalitarian “brother.” It didn’t make any sense to me at all.

It doesn’t make sense unless you begin to see the church as a household. In a household it is imperative for the father to assert himself as such. If the father is unsure about his status in the house, the kids take over and order goes out the window. If the father doesn’t correct and instruct the children, the children begin to correct and instruct each other, and they even begin to correct and instruct the parents! At some point the father has to become secure enough in his identity to establish the order of the house. To do so is not controlling and tyrannical, but rather it creates a sense of safety and harmony in the household that everyone appreciates.

A few weeks after the Lord began to lay this on my heart, I got my first opportunity to test it. It was Sunday morning and at the close of the service one of the young women in the congregation came to the altar and began wailing and crying, as if in deep agony. I instantly received a strong impression that she was crying for her daddy and that I was to go over and put my arms around her and be that daddy. This was very awkward for me. I don’t put my hands on young ladies at the altar, and if I do lay hands, I do so very carefully and tactfully. I want to avoid the very appearance of evil. But I felt strongly that this was what the Lord wanted me to do. So I (fearfully and awkwardly) went over and wrapped my arms around her. “Father, allow her to feel that she is in your arms right now,” I prayed.

I thought that was good enough, but God wasn’t finished. “Tell her that you’re her father,” the Lord spoke to my heart. “And tell her that she’s your daughter.” I can’t tell you how much fear I felt at that moment. How can I just tell this woman that I’m her father? I’m barely old enough to be her older brother, much less her father! But God said to tell her that I’m her father! So I told her, “I know that you’ve never had a relationship with your father. But I want you to know that you’re not fatherless. I’m your father. I’ll be a covering for you.” With tears in her eyes she looked at me and said, “When I was at the altar I was crying out in my heart, ‘Lord, why won’t you hug me? I need you to hug me!’ Then you came over and prayed, ‘Lord let her feel that your love through my arms right now.’ For the first time in my life,” she continued, “I felt like I was being held by my heavenly father.”

That moment revolutionized my life. I always thought it was pride to assert my authority or position in the church. But in this situation I realized that had I not obeyed God and stepped forward to be the father that he’s called me to be, this young lady would have walked away from the altar as empty as she came. This situation confronted me with the fact that if I do not become secure in my identification with the fatherhood of God, a whole generation of sons and daughters will remain fatherless.

The calling of every pastor is to manifest the fatherhood of God in the lives of every member of the local household; the church. The one barrier that keeps us from doing so is insecurity. Insecurity is self-doubt that connects itself to my sense of identity. Insecurity means that I still need to be fathered – it means that I need a father to come alongside me and tell me who I am. Because I am still looking to be fathered, I can’t be the father that the members of my congregation need me to be. And so the fatherhood deficit in my own life gets transferred into the lives of every member of my congregation, and the sons and daughters never prophesy.

“Your sons will take the place of your fathers,” says God through the psalmist. To this point you have lived your life in search of a father. But now you will live your life in search of sons. Till now you have looked into the eyes of fathers and cried out, “Do you know who I am?” But from this day forward you will look into the eyes of sons and cry out, “Do you know who you are?” You have lived to be fathered, now you will live to be a father. You have longed to be made a prince, now you will long to make princes. There’s a whole generation of sons out there for whom the world is waiting. You will make them princes in all the earth! And it starts with the embrace of the calling; I am no longer a boy in need of a father. I will continue to be teachable and pursue instruction, but I will also recognize that God has done something in me that is reproducible now and he’s called me to reproduce. I am a pastor, and that means that I’m also a father.