Blue Chip Ministry in a Blue-Collar Context

What might it look like to refuse generalizations about faithful pastoral ministry and allow the people and context of actual ministerial labor to inform the measure of faithfulness?

At Greystone, we make much of the ordinary sources of wisdom in God’s Word and ways. But by “ordinary” we don’t mean something less valuable or less important. In fact, we mean the opposite. It is in the ordinary (and in that sense mundane) contexts of life that God, in his ordering and sustaining providence, surrounds us with what we are to regard as sources of potential wisdom. From the ant in Proverbs whose example of industry is supposed to be noted by the sluggard, to the skilled merchant or ruler or craftsman or father or mother whose accumulated wisdom is supposed to be gleaned by the observant, God fills our lives with particular relationships and contexts that are to be attended to with spiritual interest.

This informs pastoral ministry, which is not ministry to people in general but to people in particular—these people, right here, in this place and time, with their stories and backgrounds and not others. Faithful pastoral ministry is therefore something that requires not only the learned skills of biblical exegesis and hermeneutics, theology and history, and so on, but also patience, listening, and a kind of conformation to the particular people one is called to shepherd. This is of course only one particular expression of something that is true of the Christian life in general. This is more than respecting God’s providence; it’s using it.

In today’s Greystone Conversations episode Dr. Mark A. Garcia sits down with Pastor Aaron Carr. Pastor Carr is the minister of Word and Sacrament at First Presbyterian Church in Trenton, Michigan in the greater Detroit area, and he is also the Director of the Greystone Learning Community there. Pastor Carr grew up in the context he now serves as pastor, which has helped him serve them in important ways: a blue-collar environment with a rugged and tenaciously faithful people. We talked about how this has shaped his ministry among them, how mentors in his life have guided his mentorship of others, and what advice he might have for those who are called to pastoral ministry—a ministry that must love particular people enough to watch, listen to, and really get to know them before deciding what care for them looks like.