What Pastoral Imagination Is and Is Not

Dr. Eileen Campbell-Reed

When my research partner, Christian Scharen wrote the Learning Pastoral Imagination grant in 2007–08, he was envisioning a way to study ministry as a practice and to build on the concept of pastoral imagination, first coined by Craig Dykstra in the late 1990s. For more than 16 years Chris and I have been conducting the LPI study. In the early years we interviewed small groups of senior ministers, a total of 25 pastors in various Christian denominations, to gain insight into what mature and robust pastoral imagination might look like in the lives of wise and experienced ministers. Simultaneously, we recruited 50 seminary students from 10 schools. Our aim was to follow their entry into the practice of ministry and continue to interview, survey, and occasionally visit them to witness how they learn in practice.

Over these years we have learned what pastoral imagination looks like in practice and how it is learned in multiple, complex, yet somewhat predictable ways. We have shared our insights through publications and talks, and Three Minute Ministry Mentor. We often share our findings with new ministers who are making the transition from seminary into ministry, with more experienced ministers growing in their maturity and wisdom, and with mentors and denominational leaders who want to support the practice of ministry. And we also take the valuable insights gained from our data collection and qualitative study and share them with theological educators in seminaries and divinity schools. We want seminary professors to be able to take what we have learned and use it in the backward design of their teaching. We hope they will better educate and prepare ministers for vocations of serving God, faith communities, and the world.

Having taught many groups of ministers, seminarians, chaplains, and theological educators about pastoral imagination, I’ve learned it is important to say both what the capacity and character of pastoral imagination entails, and also, what it is not.

What pastoral imagination is NOT

Let’s clear the way by naming some of the easy misconceptions related to pastoral imagination, in other words what it is not.

1.      It is not simply “creativity in ministry.” For instance, it is not doing sermon monologues, or leading parishioners to make vision boards, or having a carnival in the summer for children in the neighborhood.

2.      It is not “predicting the future” in ministry, such as creative calendaring, casting a ministry vision, or planning ministry events.

3.      It is not “making up stories or characters” as in “she has a vivid imagination” or “he has an imaginary friend.” To be sure, ministry that is in touch with playfulness, and the inner lives of children, is extraordinarily useful and essential even to ministry with our youngest people, but it is not the essence of pastoral imagination.

4.      It is not “daydreaming or fantasy,” which are forms of thinking and cognition that are often disconnected from reality. When used thoughtfully and ethically both daydreaming and “as if” thinking about future stories can be valuable pastoral care tools. Yet they are not the central meaning of the concept, pastoral imagination.

Each of these ministry tasks could be activities that come from a robust pastoral imagination, yet alone do not capture its character. And whether an activity reflects a minister’s capacity for pastoral imagination has more to do with why that activity was chosen as an appropriate pastoral response to the immediate situation. It has less to do with it being “imaginative” in a more popular sense.

Each of these uses of “imagination” do share in common a type of seeing in the mind’s eye something that is not obviously or measurably existent in the world outside or beyond the self. Pastoral imagination also depends on a similar capacity to see something that is not already present in a situation. However, it is a kind of seeing that is disciplined by the work and experience of being a pastor, leading people spiritually, thinking like a pastor, and taking risks and responsibility to meet the pastoral situation.

So, what is pastoral imagination?

As noted elsewhere, pastoral imagination is a concept, a book, and a research project. Here we are focusing on the concept, and I’ll also share two brief, real-life examples of ministry in rural settings from the LPI research and publications.

Pastoral imagination is a capacity for the wise practice of ministry, and it includes the following dimensions.

1.      It is embodied. We don’t just know by thinking cognitively, we actually know “by body” how to practice ministry and be present to the work of our vocations.

2.      It is relational. We know the work of ministry with and through relationships, including our relationship with God, with ourselves, and with the people we serve as well as mentors and colleagues. It takes all of these relationships, and a profound understanding that grasps power dynamics, personal histories, and the depths of complex motivations that animate people’s actions, to cultivate pastoral imagination.

3.      It is spiritual. The practice of ministry includes spiritual practices, such as prayer, meditation, and other forms of spiritual attunement and attention. Yet, as we have argued, pastoral imagination, entails an understanding of ministry itself as a spiritual practice, which is unique and particular to the work.

4.      It is integrative and improvisational. Drawing on all the particular and multiple kinds of skill and knowledge about self, context, history, scripture, relationships of power, and ritual practices of ministry (pastoral care, preaching, presiding, teaching, leading), the capacity contributes to a unified holistic practice of ministry.

5.      It is courageous and takes risks and responsibility. In complex ministry situations ministers learn from each new situation to build up the capacity for greater pastoral imagination and wisdom with time and experience.

Here are two ministers in their early years, who learned to persist through difficulty coming from within their congregations and beyond. Despite these challenges, both Debbie and Roberto manage to strengthen and expand their skills and capacities to act and lead with pastoral imagination. Sometimes this essential quality takes shape in the face of very difficult circumstances.

Pastoral imagination itself is forged in a dialogue between the everyday rounds of doing the work of ministry and the critical and compelling moments that call on something more from the minister. Debbie and Roberto engaged in the daily round of ministry, learning the embodied, relational, and spiritual, capacity required for wise leadership. Yet it was the points of disconnect and sense of failure, the lack of support or space for flourishing, which brought forth and solidified the capacity to practice ministry wisely.

1.      Debbie is a white Lutheran minister in her early 30s when she was sent out on a year-long internship. This first solo assignment as a new pastor was on the Iron Range in a depressed and declining economy, a small town and church with low attendance and lower aspirations. Church members expected her to lead and offer services, but they had a little interest in engaging the faith community in an active way. The situation left Debbie feeling like she had to step into some serious gaps. Vocational, systems, relational and purpose gaps were all daunting challenges in the placement. Fortunately, however, Debbie reached out for help. She found wise pastoral voices who helped her reframe her vocation, relationships, purpose and leadership in the floundering system. She found ways to cultivate her pastoral imagination and prepare for a new call to ministry that would come after that year of internship. Read more of Debbie’s story here.

Ask yourself: How will I respond and lean into leading with pastoral imagination when it feels like I’m “talking to a brick wall”?

2.      Roberto, also in his early thirties, a Mexican American with family in both Mexico and the U.S. is a third-generation cradle Presbyterian. After seminary graduation, he found himself trying to improvise his ministry in a very difficult situation. Unlike Debbie who was up against the challenge of leading people who did not care to follow, Roberto engaged his community, but he could not connect with or please his supervisor. From chapter 36 of Pastoral Imagination:

“No matter what Roberto tried to do in the small-town Texas church where he was sent to work on outreach to the Mexican community, it seemed his white female pastoral supervisor could find little to be happy with. He was trying out work he had never tried before, and everything had a steep learning curve. The supervising pastor told Roberto to get out into the community and meet more people, work harder, and make things happen for the ministry. However, when he spent time in the trailer parks, restaurants, and meat markets where most of the Mexican Americans lived and worked, he was reprimanded for not keeping up with time schedules and being in the wrong places.”

Roberto felt demoralized by the situation. Yet he did not give up on his calling or his hope for finding a place with a better ministry fit. He was up against an implicitly and explicitly racist situation, one which did not expect him to succeed. Hidden deeper in the reality of the situation were subtle ways that “background, the support systems, the assumptions, and the social and relational conditions” were not stacked in his favor. They did not “make flourishing and improvisation possible.”

Despite these painful challenges, Roberto learned important skills and leadership strategies, and when he and his wife, also a pastor, moved to a new state, they both found ministry placements that supported their vocations.

Ask yourself: What are the visible and invisible challenges I’m facing in my ministry? How will I improvise, and who will I call on to support me in this situation?

As you navigate how pastoral imagination takes shape in your ministry, I hope these questions will help you reflect and grow even in the most challenging circumstances.

Rev. Dr. Eileen Campbell-Reed is Research Associate Professor Vanderbilt Divinity School (Nashville, Tennessee), Co-Director of the Learning Pastoral Imagination Project, author of Pastoral Imagination and #PandemicPastoring Report, and founder and host of Three Minute Ministry Mentor and The Writing Table.