Date of Award

Fall 2026

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Ministry (DMin)

College

Barnett College of Ministry & Theology

Department

Department of Christian Ministries and Religion

Primary Advisor

Dr. Robby Waddell

Second Advisor

Dr. Hilton Burkholder

Third Advisor

Dr. Jeremy Sims

Abstract

Western Evangelical pastoral culture often prizes vitality, growth, and platform, but pays little theological attention to the pastor's inner life, especially in the first half of ministerial life, when identity and calling are still taking shape. Many young pastors find themselves functioning less as shepherds of souls than as managers of metrics and institutional momentum, roles shaped more by American business logic than by the church's historic practices of pastoral care. In this quiet shift, something sacred has thinned, leaving pastors prone to anxious utility and vocational idolatry. This dissertation explores what has been diminished within the inner life of the first-half-of-life pastor and what might yet be recovered. What is to be recovered is contemplation and contemplative pastoring. Contemplation is a posture of unhurried, unperformative prayerful depth focused on awareness and resonance with God and others. Contemplative Pastoring, then, is pastoring in the same posture, focused on awareness and resonance with God within a community. At its center is a pedagogy of descent: a pattern of non-grasping, incarnational hiddenness drawn from scripture and the church's contemplative tradition and embodied in the lived witness of an exemplary contemplative pastor. Far from foreign, this pedagogy echoes the ancient conviction, biblical and patristic alike, that God is disclosed not through ascent and achievement but through kenotic descent into ordinary faithfulness. Drawing on biblical, historical, and theological reflection alongside a narrative case study of this exemplar, the study surfaces interwoven patterns of descent such as silence, mentorship, and holding space for others and names a gap between the contemplative vocation many pastors need and the managerial formation many receive. It reimagines pastoral maturity not as platform or productivity, but as hidden, incarnational attentiveness sustained by the patient cultivation of souls.

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