The Ecological Pastor: Toward a New Paradigm of Pastoral Ministry at the Dawn of the Anthropocene
[Thesis]
Amadon, James Roger
Wirzba, Norman
Duke University
2019
157 p.
D.Min.
Duke University
2019
Humans are becoming increasingly aware of the widespread destruction that modern, industrial society has brought upon the earth, as well as the need for a radical shift in human perception and action in order to avoid catastrophic consequences and to foster the healing of the earth. Instead of leading this shift by embodying God's love for creation and bearing witness to God's work of new creation in Jesus Christ, the Church has been mired in modern theological, philosophical, and ecclesial frameworks that prevent it from perceiving creation correctly and acting in creation redemptively. Pastors have played a key role in the Church's modern captivity and must play a key role in its reform. To that end, this thesis offers a new paradigm of pastoral ministry - the Ecological Pastor - that enables pastors to diagnose what has gone wrong, emboldens them to confront those errors, empowers them to change people's perceptual framework, and encourages them to create new models of congregational ministry and mission. Chapter 1 establishes the need for a new paradigm by comparing the leadership of Moses in Israel's journey out of Egypt with the call for pastors to guide their churches out of modernity's destructive worldview and practices. Chapter 2 provides the paradigm's foundation by bringing together the worldviews of arcadian ecology and contemporary agrarianism with an eco-agrarian reading of biblical leadership. Chapter 3 shows how pastors embody the paradigm through the perceptual practices of contemplative ecology and the emerging model of Watershed Discipleship. Chapter 4 explores how ecological pastors can lead their congregations through the requisite cultural change utilizing the philosophy of Adaptive Leadership and concludes with some provisional reflections on key practices ecological pastors can employ in each stage of the transformational process. The thesis is intended as a starting point; more will need to be done to refine and expand what an ecological pastor looks like in theory and practice.