목회자의 자기 성찰과 성숙을 위한 소고(小考)

Abstract

The Corona 19 pandemic has been making so sweeping and critical an impact on all the areas of the Korean society in general and on the Church in particular since its outbreak at the end of 2019. It has contributed, among others, to weakening the spiritual unity of the church members and their mutual bond, and resulted in loosening their loyalty to their home churches. Besides this obvious transitional crisis, what is more troubling is that there has happened a rapid decrease of the Korean society’s confidence on both the church and Christian ministers these past 4 years. This current state of the affairs has been pressing wakeful and thoughtful Christians to make a creative response to such a decline in the social credibility of the church and its leaders. One may wonder how to break through this impasse? There may be various ways to deal with this deadlock. The present essay seeks to secure a way out to overcome this transitional crisis in the efforts of the pastors of the Reformed church((hereafter Reformed pastors) to examine their spiritual burnouts and repent from their sins in order to renew their sense of the divine calling. This essay aims to put forth a preliminary proposal to how to facilitate the spiritual renewal of the Reformed pastors and their growth, based on the theology of the Reformed Church on pastoral ministry. Its central thesis is that the Reformed Church’s pastors should achieve a quantum leap growth in four areas in order to cope with the critical affairs facing the Korean church, which include the rapid decline of social credibility of the church and an increasing anti-Christian sentiments of the Korean populace. The afore-mentioned four areas include the pastors’ deeper understanding of pastoral ministry, the pastoral leadership to embrace lay Christians as partners and coworkers, the capacity of the pastors to make a thoroughgoing self-examination, and their matured social leadership. Four supporting argumentations for this thesis have been presented. First, the growth of the Reformed pastors and their maturity can be accomplished through their deeper understanding of what it means to perform pastoral ministry. Secondly, the growth of the Reformed pastors and their maturity can be achieved through their full cooperation with lay Christians. Thirdly, the growth of the Reformed pastors and their maturity can be facilitated through their sincere self-examination and self-inspection. Lastly, the growth of the Reformed pastors and their maturity can be accomplished through their improvement of social leadership.