Carroll's "Pastor"

Many of you know that I am in a PhD program in congregational studies. For those of you who are curious about what that means, this post and the next will highlight two central figures in the field. This is a continuation of the posts drawn from my PhD exams.

Jackson Carroll is one of the central figures in congregational studies. He has served as the director of the center for congregational research at Hartford Seminary as well as the Pulpit and Pew Project at Duke University focusing on pastoral leadership.
Jackson Carroll’s early work focused on cultural shifts in mainline congregations in the United States since the 1950’s. In addition, his more recent emphasis has been on pastoral leadership. His work in this area has been central to my own research. One of his significant works is As One with Authority. The book focuses on the development of reflexive leadership among pastors. Reflexive leadership involves using socio-analytic tools to analyze situations, putting them in conversation with the Christian story, and suggesting responses. He sees this work as central to the pastoral role. For Carroll, the pastor is a cultural leader, called to shape ideas and values rather than actions. The pastor has been entrusted with the culture of the congregation through the act of ordination.
It is essential for Carroll that the pastor claim the authority that has been given to them through ordination. Just as Jesus spoke as one with authority, so too should the pastor speak as one with authority. Carroll recognizes the crisis of authority that pastors have faced in recent years. He blames the crisis on widespread questions about God, the marginalization of the church, the voluntary nature of the church, and the emphasis on shared ministry. Carroll does believe in shared ministry. He argues that ministry belongs equally to the pastor and to the laity, but there is a clear differentiation of roles. The pastor is called to steward the congregation’s goals and values. In order for the community to function effectively and live out these goals, the congregation must submit to the pastor.
Carroll sees the professionalization of the clergy in recent years as an attempt to reclaim authority within the church. Such professionalization, though, has often meant an overemphasis on actions and on pleasing the laity. Carroll calls the clergy to reclaim their role as the primary constructors of culture within the church through a focus on the organizational tasks of the pastor. In his article on leadership in the book Studying Congregations Carroll highlights the role of pastor in setting goals and creating vision statements for the congregation. While he values the priestly functions of the office, he sees them as secondary to the administrative duties. This emphasis on organization may be due to a Protestant ecclesiology that emphasizes mission to the world rather than the centrality of sacramental worship, but it seems more likely that it is a by-product of emphasizing a sociological view of the church rather than a theological view. Sociology emphasizes human action which can be observed over that of divine action which cannot be scientifically studied.
While Carroll argues for an equality between the pastor and the laity, it is clear that he favors a hierarchical structure of the church with the clergy at the top. The congregation is the people gathered around the pastor. His more recent book on pastoral ministry is entitled God’s Potters where the congregation is envisioned as jars of clay and the pastors as the potters. The pastors are God’s representatives to whom the congregation is supposed to submit. Granted, the congregation has a role in granting authority to the pastor through ordination. He assumes such a hierarchical structure as normative for the church. In fact, he seems to have a single normative view of pastor that is operative in his work but not adequately reflected upon. “Pastor” seems to refer to someone similar to himself: a white, male, middle- to upper-class, ordained clergyperson within a mainline denomination. While he values the ministry of the laity, the emphasis on shared ministry has help create a crisis of authority. While he includes women in his examples and has a chapter on women ministers in God’s Potters, the increase of women in the workforce has created significant problems for the church. There is little reflection on communities where women have always been in the workforce and have served as significant members of congregations. While he acknowledges racial diversity among the clergy, the shift from a young, white, all-male clergy pool has also contributed to the crisis authority and a confusion in the pastoral role.
Carroll’s work is significant because he is currently seen as one of the leading scholars on pastoral ministry in the United States. His work with Pulpit and Pew is being disseminated to denominations throughout the country, including my own. His work serves to highlight the hegemonic discourse regarding pastor that I am trying to dismantle in my own work. While I am willing to learn from his work, its significance is limited for me by Carroll’s blind spots. What I do appreciate is his image of the pastor as playing a significant role as a producer of culture within a congregation. The pastor does often construct one of the dominant discourses within a congregation and laity are often forced to make choices and compromises in response to its power.