As I’ve talked about before, the gifts of the Holy Spirit often overlap with each other – for example, the gift of faith and the gift of mercy can masquerade as one another, words of knowledge and prophecy are often confused, and the gift of teaching can be masked by other giftings, such as shepherding, discernment, exhortation, prophecy, and words of wisdom. Today, I’d like to tackle the topic of the gift of mercy vs. a pastoral gifting – because once again, while they’re different, the two are closely linked.
Before I get into it, realize that neither one is a position. Just because someone is called “pastor” does not mean that they have the pastoral gifting (in fact, many pastors are much more gifted in leadership and/or teaching, because these two gifts are what we want to see in our spiritual leaders). Neither is gender-specific – some of the people most gifted in mercy are men, and women can absolutely have shepherding/pastoral giftings.
The biggest difference between the gift of mercy and the pasturing (shepherding) gift is how they approach people and especially others’ “problems” or issues. Someone with the gift of mercy feels the joy, pain, struggles, excitement, etc. of others. They want to give a hug when needed, and when they give encouragement or advice, it’s almost always to make the person feel better. Someone with a shepherding (pastoral) gift is less interested in the immediate removal of pain and is more likely to be trying to get these people healthy and whole in the future.
We need both of these gifts. Someone with the gift of mercy is uniquely equipped to help people in the moment of their need, to rejoice with them in their mountain-top experience, and make them feel heard and appreciated. This is vital. The weakness of living in this type of encouragement is that the merciful person tends to have a shorter-term outlook on life: after all, if the person doesn’t make it through this moment, they won’t be able to thrive later.
Someone with a pastoral gifting is much better equipped to look to the future. Their focus is on helping make mature, healthy Christians – this includes rejoicing/weeping/etc. with a person, but they are also much more likely to begin gently pushing people toward health and wholeness rather than just letting them know they’re heard and valued. Of course, the problem with this is that people can begin to feel like projects, or they may resent someone trying to change them when they don’t want to change – they want to be heard and appreciated without having to change their hearts, lives, mindsets, etc.
Both of these perspectives come from the Holy Spirit. He is called the “comforter” (John 14:26) and helps us in our weakness (Romans 8:26) as well as the teaching us all things (John 14:26) and purifying us to holiness (2 Thessalonians 2:13).
Let me try to give an example of each gift in action. Let’s say a woman (Skylar) is very much struggling with a specific professor at college (this is a hypothetical example, BTW). No matter what she does or how hard she works, he always gives her poor grades, shames her in front of the class, etc. It gets so bad that she is weeping while she asks for prayer at her small group. Two people jump into the action: someone with the gift of mercy (who I’ll call Merciful) and someone with a pastoral gift (who I’ll call Shepherd).
Merciful immediately moves over to be close to Skylar. They might hug her, or they might just be close enough to create a sense of personal care. They tell Skylar that she’s going to make it through this. She is smart; the professor just doesn’t understand – don’t believe this professor’s implications that she isn’t intelligent or is unworthy. They finish by praying for Skylar to have courage and hope.
Alternately, Shepherd moves closer to Skylar, possibly giving a hug, or just being close enough to show genuine concern. They remind Skylar of what God says about her – that she is loved, treasured, and defined by what God says about her. They pray for Skylar, asking God to give her strategies for how to love the professor and do well. They might even remind Skylar that she can see this as a curse or an opportunity to grow in love and seeing herself the way God sees her.
I hope I’ve made both of these very positive – the outcome will be greatly affected by why Skylar was sharing her troubles with the group. If she just wanted to be heard and comforted, the gift of mercy was by far the better response. But if she is truly struggling, learning how to see herself the way God sees her and even making a plan how to deal with the professor is much more helpful than just saying “oh yes, we care.”
In the end, we need both the merciful and the pastoral/shepherds in our Christian communities. And if one or the other comes to you and gives you the results you were not looking to receive, give them grace – and realize you were just looking for a different gifting at this point in your situation.
