Comments on: wanna be a pastor? find a pastor

By: Curt

Curt — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 20:51:17 +0000

Weeeeel! Whew! I haven’t known an infinite number of pastors, but I do talk with other actual unwashed Christians sitting in the back of the church. Where the sinners sit. And I do discover that many of the fellow unwashed have had terrible experiences with pastors. Many of them having had adulterous relationships with parishoners. Some of them being thieves. Many of them on power trips, telling their parishoners how unacceptably sinful they are. Getting into the judgment business themselves. Others telling people they can’t come to their churches because they were too sinful. Others spewing theology that isn’t contained in the creeds and has very little basis in the Gospels.

In addition, we don’t have many examples of full time pastors, ministers, and priests in the first century. In fact, the opposite seems more the rule than otherwise.

In addition, the Mormons–a church that seems to be growing these days by leaps and bounds–doesn’t maintain a full-time clergy as far as I can tell. And I work with Mormon every day. He says he and his fellow parishoners do fine, thank you very much. They take care of one another.

In addition, I thought we were trying to get away from that idea that there are certain people that are God’d special representatives on earth, that are keepers of the special knowledge of God that only the chosen are admitted to. I thought we went through a reformation, in part, to get away from the inherant corruption of church hiearchies. Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Supporting a fulltime clergy is a way we Christians have of allowing ourselves to be lazy and irresponsible. We don’t have to minister to one another–let the pastor do it. We don’t have to come to terms with Scripture–let the pastor do it and distill in down into something easy to swallow. We don’t have to come to terms with God–let the pastor do that for us and report back on his or her findings.

By: elizabeth

elizabeth — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 20:59:56 +0000

if we are going to accept that being a pastor is in fact a career. which i do accept because i for one don’t think anyone would put up with what they put up with if they weren’t paid or if they also had to hold down another full time job. So, if we are going to accept that we have churches and that the ceo’s of these churches are pastors, than why would we expect people to treat it as temporary post? we don’t ask that of fireman or wealth creators or teaches. and, if we did i think we’d be pretty much guarunteeing ourselves some half-assed pastoring. for one its difficult to get people to really care and invest in something if they think its temporary, simply something they do inbetween thier real job or what have you. for another, if you know a post is temporary you can make decisions that are nice in the short term but death in the long term. Without a long term view, at least the initial belief you are in it for the long haul, its too difficult to overcome the temptation to cut corners, to forgo the projects that require patience in favor of those that bring a quick return. And finally, what about experience? Do we not think that after pastoring for 10 years someone may be better equipped to deal with a certain situation than someone on thier 3 year peace-corp stint in the church? Also, Jesus was a pastor for 3 years because he was killed. He then continued to be a pastor by proxy through the Holy Spirit. Using his tenure as normative seems to me rather absurd.

By: ken

ken — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 19:11:43 +0000

bill, pastoring is such a career that most people try than cycle out of. 75% of those who begin don’t end up doing it for life. Many of the pastors you’ve known in your life are probably not lifers. ken

By: Bill

Bill — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 21:47:55 +0000

Yes, Ken!

But what I want to know is why anyone in his or her right mind would ever want to be a pastor?

If you want to save people, why don’t you be a fireman? Firewoman?

If you want to create well-being in the world, why don’t you create wealth?

If you want to serve God, why don’t you do so in an unobtrusive way?

If Jesus is our example (he was a pastor for about 3 years), why is it different with many of our pastors today? Why is pastoring a career? Why isn’t pastoring full time something people do for a few years and then cycle back out into the general population?

Why isn’t this kind of expectation the rule rather than the exception? Does it have to do with economics? Or does it have to do with love for God?

By: metler

metler — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 15:00:30 +0000

EXCELLENT!! Now you’re cooking.

By: steven hamilton

steven hamilton — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 13:55:03 +0000

i think this is particularly imortant nowadays…because i think we have (and may have always had) several factors at play:

1. trust-building…is the relationship based on the higher good? not just loyalty to an institution (or a 501(3)(c) corporation) or is it more relational/directional for the higher good…this can be hard to discern and can break trust

2. many people think they can merely substitute affinity friendships for this, yet friends are not really a substitute for this type of thing…a long time ago i had a friend say to me (paraphrase): you have a lot of ther timothy’s n your life…where are your paul’s? meaning, i have a ot of great friends, but where are the people of maturity who speak into your life and help reflect on life in Christ with you?

anyway, thanks for that reminder this morning ken!