What is the Immediate End of Pastoral Ministry?

Immediate ends are nothing more than penultimate (or subordinate) ends defined as that which the shepherd is doing right now. So, another way to ask the same question is: What is the main thing the pastor/shepherd is to be doing in the immediate?

If the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever, then the immediate operation of the shepherd on a sheep is to prepare the soul for heaven, to prepare him for God. This is what the Puritans understood so well, that we seem not to understand at all. This is why when we open up a book by any Puritan and read a few sentences, it is as if the rest of the world beyond the boundaries of the page fade to blurry and black and white, while the black and white of the seemingly archaic print turns into a world of color and clarity. All that we had just been thinking is reduced to the tone of triviality that it always was. We needed the sanity of the dead man to show us.

Nothing so tempers the envy for sheer numbers in the pew like the stark reality that each of the people over whom we watch will stand next to us on judgment day. And what will their condition betray about us? What did we care about?

Not to be lost in the shuffle here is that even among shepherds there is a diversity of gifts. Hence, much of what each soul needs, I alone cannot give them, even as an instrument in the hands of the Spirit. So how do we combine the urgency of standing before the chief Shepherd with the contentment in how He has arranged the body and the humility that it does not finally depend upon us? It is a balance that only comes (from what I hear and am experiencing) from being corrected when we are on one or the other of those extremes--not enough urgency, too much micromanaging, too little prayerful dependence, too little strategic, organized planning.

This is why the shepherd needs the gospel every bit as much as his flock. This is why the cross of Christ is at the center of everything we say (1 Cor. 2:2) and our every boast (Gal. 6:14). So maybe our answer above needs to be refined. What is the immediate end of pastoral ministry?

The immediate end of the pastoral ministry is to prepare the soul for heaven by preaching the gospel to myself and everyone around me every day.