Friday, December 08, 2006
Is Ministry Addictive?
Out of Ur has a post about pastors that fail to uphold their "image." I find this a difficult bit of writing to respond to because I am personally conflicted about what it has to say.
On the one hand, I have a great deal of sympathy for the thousands of God-fearing, hard-working pastors out there. Born of humility, stewed in repentance, these men, and depending on your particular bent, women, are doing the hard work of the church.
On the other hand, there are so many that do what they do for all the wrong reasons. "It's easier than a real job." There's a power trip involved. For some scholasticism appeals more than productivity. For some it's the very fact that they can hide behind the pulpit and avoid the genuine spiritual development the rest of us work so hard to obtain.
I'm not sure there will be a specific point to this post, but there are two comments I want to make.
The first comment I want to make is that the very language of the Ur post makes the problem much worse. It is steeped in the language addicition and psychology when it should be drowning in the language of sin, repentance and grace. The very heart of the problem described is the expectation of a pastor, either from the congregation or self inflicted.
I, for one, long for a pastor that is not perfect, but instead models confession and repentance. A pastor that lives by the trite, but true "Please be patient, God's not finished with me yet." Isn't that, after all, really what the Christian life is all about? The perfection of re-creation is our goal, but our life is the process. The process is one of failure, confession, repentance, and gradual improvement.
The second point I want to make is that in the creation of "offices" of ministry we create these expectations when I think all scripture called us to was ministry. "Offices" must be maintained and adorned, they become the seat of credibility for the institution. I think God has a different model in mind for His church.
We are all called to ministry, and at different times, I think we are all called to different ministry. This reflects the fact that all of us will from time-to-time fail in our life with Christ. I talked a while back about how Ted Haggard did not need to be restored to ministry, that personal restoration was in fact his current ministry. When we create offices and invest people with those offices, we make it most difficult for people's ministry to change, for the office defines the ministry.
I am not sure the answer to this problem, for churches that have more mobile systems run into huge problems with power plays and so forth.
Which is the real point, I think. We are all sinners and we all sin. Pastors and pew-sitters. When that becoems the basic fact of the church, and appropriate responses are executed (confession, repentance, etc.) we'll be a lot better off. A lot better.
Related Tags: ministry, addiction, office, confession, repentance
On the one hand, I have a great deal of sympathy for the thousands of God-fearing, hard-working pastors out there. Born of humility, stewed in repentance, these men, and depending on your particular bent, women, are doing the hard work of the church.
On the other hand, there are so many that do what they do for all the wrong reasons. "It's easier than a real job." There's a power trip involved. For some scholasticism appeals more than productivity. For some it's the very fact that they can hide behind the pulpit and avoid the genuine spiritual development the rest of us work so hard to obtain.
I'm not sure there will be a specific point to this post, but there are two comments I want to make.
The first comment I want to make is that the very language of the Ur post makes the problem much worse. It is steeped in the language addicition and psychology when it should be drowning in the language of sin, repentance and grace. The very heart of the problem described is the expectation of a pastor, either from the congregation or self inflicted.
I, for one, long for a pastor that is not perfect, but instead models confession and repentance. A pastor that lives by the trite, but true "Please be patient, God's not finished with me yet." Isn't that, after all, really what the Christian life is all about? The perfection of re-creation is our goal, but our life is the process. The process is one of failure, confession, repentance, and gradual improvement.
The second point I want to make is that in the creation of "offices" of ministry we create these expectations when I think all scripture called us to was ministry. "Offices" must be maintained and adorned, they become the seat of credibility for the institution. I think God has a different model in mind for His church.
We are all called to ministry, and at different times, I think we are all called to different ministry. This reflects the fact that all of us will from time-to-time fail in our life with Christ. I talked a while back about how Ted Haggard did not need to be restored to ministry, that personal restoration was in fact his current ministry. When we create offices and invest people with those offices, we make it most difficult for people's ministry to change, for the office defines the ministry.
I am not sure the answer to this problem, for churches that have more mobile systems run into huge problems with power plays and so forth.
Which is the real point, I think. We are all sinners and we all sin. Pastors and pew-sitters. When that becoems the basic fact of the church, and appropriate responses are executed (confession, repentance, etc.) we'll be a lot better off. A lot better.
Related Tags: ministry, addiction, office, confession, repentance
