ROUGHLY EDITED COPY LUTHERAN PASTORAL THEOLOGY & PRACTICE LPTP-6 Captioning Provided By: Caption First, Inc. P.O. Box 1924 Lombard, IL 60148 800-825-5234 www.captionfirst.com *** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. *** >> ERIC: Thank you. That was very helpful. I still have a question, however, about the roles a pastor plays in his personal and public life. There are always lots of pressures on a pastor and it can be difficult to balance personal and professional responsibilities. I can tell this already, and I'm not even ordained yet. How should a pastor conduct himself in his relationships with other people? Are we always "on"? >> PROF. SENKBEIL: Well, Eric, sometimes it certainly seems as though there is no end to the responsibilities of being a pastor. In sense it is true a pastor is always "on," but not in that way, in sort of an artificial way, but rather in a very natural way. Because, again, what pastor does flows out of who he is. He has a vocation, to be sure, as a pastor. That's what we've been talking about here in these opening questions you men have had. But he also has other callings. If he's married, has a family, he has a vocation as a husband and as a father. If he has other responsibilities and relationships, he has other callings within those vocations, whether it be as a friend or perhaps a son or to other people. These vocations, too, are a holy calling. And a pastor, therefore, is not really falling down on the job in any way if he isn't always full time "on." Rather, he needs really to be on as Christ meant within all of those vocations. You know, of course, from your experience as an elementary school teacher, that the responsibility of a professional in that kind of very important responsibility is not something that you can kind of check in and check out of. You don't just punch the clock as an effective teacher. It's rather a real profession. It's something that you profess; that is, something that you do before other people all the time, even when you're not in the classroom. And it's really like that in the ministry. Dr. Walther in his pastoral theology says really that pastoral theology is an opitus of a soul, that is something -- a quality which dwells within the man, spiritually speaking. It's acquired through certain external means. So through these means, through the word and through the sacraments, again, we learn something more of what it means to be a pastor. But it resides deep within. It's not something that we can put on and off like you would take off a coat, for example. But rather we are called to this office. And so we're ready and willing to serve in whatever capacity as the needs arise. But that means also that we're able, willing, eager even to be husband of one wife, as St.�Paul said to Timothy; to be a loving father to our children because these are the individuals that God has given to us and to our wives to raise to ensure adulthood to serve him as God's people in the world. So we're not shirking our duty when we take time for those loved ones whom God has given us. So, therefore, we see that this is a full-time responsibility, certainly. It's an awesome responsibility. But it's something that really doesn't need to burn us out and stress us out. If we're confident of who Christ has made us to be in the church because he's given us this joy and privilege of simply being an errand boy for Jesus, if you will, dispensing His word, dispensing His sacraments for the benefit of his people in the church. Great question, Eric. *** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. ***