The Law of Gravitas

The two seminary students sat in front of me wearing suits that didn't appear to get a lot of work. They had completed the first two years of their course work, had mastered the art of the all-nighter study session, knew what it took to get the A in their classes, and were now interviewing with me to be interns in our congregation. As one of them eventually said, "This is like a job."

As the three of us talked, they kept looking over my shoulder surveying the theology books that line the walls of my study. I knew it was my job to get them to look as longingly at the work of Christ in human souls. I wondered how I would ever do this.

I remembered when I interviewed for my own seminary internship more than 25 years ago. I still can't believe a pastor hired me, because I must have appeared, well, pretty much the same way these two did.

It isn't that these students looked bad. They were sharp, pleasant twenty-somethings who I knew had done well in their coursework. They could probably even play the guitar. There really wasn't a thing wrong with them-and that was what was so striking. As far as I could see, they were only lacking one thing, but one thing that is pretty much a necessity for a pastor. The old pastors used to call gravitas. You just cannot be ordained without it.

Gravitas is a condition of the soul that has developed enough spiritual mass to attract other souls. It makes the soul appear old, but gravitas has nothing to do with age. It has everything to do with scars that have healed well, failures that have been redeemed, sins that have been forgiven, and thorns that have settled into the flesh.

It all expands the soul until it is larger than the body that contains it, large enough to hold the truth of the Word of God. And, like gravity, it pulls others not to the pastor but to the holy work that has occurred within the pastor's soul.

This gravity isn't a commodity that can be purchased with seminary tuition payments. It certainly isn't found in a library. A weighty soul has to be developed the hard way.

The early church found gravitas through persecution. The desert fathers and monks found it by abandoning comfort and entering a vocation of prayer. Most of the reformers found it in prison. The slaves found it by singing spirituals under the baking sun in the cotton fields. And pastors find gravitas in the congregation.

So as I looked deep into the eyes of my pristine new interns, I wondered what I would have to do to them to stretch out their souls. And how exactly do I bring this up in their first interview with me?

Actually, I know all too well what I would have to do: I have to let the church be the church. Their year with us will be filled with committee meetings that go on forever and accomplish nothing, with junior highers who can't be cool unless they looked bored in youth group, with a legion of phone calls and appointments with people who are unhappy, rushing across town to visit someone in the hospital only to discover that the patient was just discharged (you aren't getting credit for this one), and the relentless return of Sundays that just keep demanding another sermon or Sunday school lesson.

Along the way they will try things that bomb. They will do their best with sermons that still don't work. They will say things in hospitals that really do not help. And they will be criticized not only for these substantive failures, but for their haircuts and shoes.

If they are paying attention, they will notice that their supervisor isn't doing a lot better and is still making some of their same mistakes. But I pray that I will also show them how to fall so very deeply in love with the flock of Christ, who just keep returning to our ministry. They come not in spite of our mistakes but because of them. It is the mistakes, the hurts, and even the forgiven sins that make room for the gospel to be at work within the pastor's soul.

There is even enough room, finally, to love, which of course is the most attractive thing about gravitas.

Former Leadership Journal editor at large M. Craig Barnes is president of Princeton Theological Seminary. He previously pastored National Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C., and Shadyside Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh, and was professor of leadership and ministry at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania.