I plan for this to be the last post about church growth as it relates to structures. I started the series because I have a deep seated belief that the local church is ultimately a force for good in this world and that the pastor at the helm needs to have a fuller understanding of his position within the church.

Just as God has ordained some to be teachers, apostles, prophets and healers, there is a variety within each of these groups that needs to be recognized. The giftings of one pastor may be to a small congregation where as another imbued by with gifting to lead a large church.

I still believe that the local church is the ultimate force for good but the curtain need to be pulled open and the church needs to see the little man called Christendom who has been calling our shots for far too long.

Christendom is a concept borne out of a close connection of church and state, not necessarily a theocracy but a symbiotic relationship where one feeds the other to their own ends. And Christendom thinking is destroying the church.

We live for the most part in a post-modern, post-Christian, post-denominational world. A world that has lost automatic respect for the church and it's teaching because of how we have represented Christ and His teachings. Witness what clerical abuse of children, institutional thinking, denominationalism, political manipulation by refusing communion to those who expouse Heterodoxy in their thinking. These things and Christians who exhibit little to no Christ-likeness has stolen away the good will of the church universal and must be examined and where appropriate repented of and where appropriate rejected or redeemed.

Christendom has ended but we are still behaving as if it's alive and well.

The net effect over the entire Christendom epoch was that Christianity moved from being a revolutionary, social and spiritual movement to being a static religious institution with its attendant structures, priesthood, and sacraments. Taken as a sociological reality, Christendom has been in decline for 250 years so much so, that contemporary Western culture has been called by many historians (secular and Christian) the "post-Christendom" culture.
    -Michael Frost, Exiles, p.4

    
I'll go out on a very short limb and say this, the decline of the (at least Western) church is because of a failure to see it's place in the world clearly.

So how do we begin to turn this around? It's not what you might think.

Step 1: Christian unity!
Step 2: See step 1.

Our Savior Jesus once said "A house divided against itself can not stand" and later went on to say "My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me." (John 17:20-23)

If we resolve to be Christians, one body, one faith, one baptism, one together and open to the transformation of our lives by the Holy Spirit of God I believe that church form and structure will flow naturally into our current contexts. In some places it will look the same as before and in other places radically different but we have a God big enough to handle it.

This is the call of an Emerging Pastor and their leadership of Gods church.

Following up from my last post, On the market I want to reflect for a moment on what I believe God's motivations are for moving me on from one church to the next (wherever that is).

We were reading through James chapter one in my bible study last night and a passage that really hooked into people was:

 4Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. 5If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him.

Mature and complete, not lacking anything, that really resonates with me. In my mind it links to a Scriptural principal that I live my life by. It is the lesson from the parable of the talents: "Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master's happiness!"

Our maturity and completeness is borne out of our faithfulness to God in the small things that he has given us. When we show faithful with that He gives us more. This is no "Prayer of Jabez" increase my borders nonsense but a call to Christ likeness.

I believe that over the past 10 years of my Christian life God has been calling me to ministry. This wasn't something I was able or prepared to do in the beginning. It started with a call and in faith I answered and that began a journey.

In just answering the call of God he began to add more to me. I found myself leading a bible study, leading the congregation in worship and other things that I will label small, not to belittle them but to put them in context.

Being faithful with those things came more responsibility, soon God opened the door to bible college so I could further learn and grow. Along with it came the role of Student Pastor at my church. The role stretched me, made me think differently and brought me to a higher place in my relationship with God.

From there God has placed more responsibility on me with a pastoral position and the position of Elder in his church.

At each turn God has taught me something, entrusted me with something and allowed my care of that something to stretch, grow and test me. After every instance of faithfully dealing with that something, he has given me more.

Leaving my current church is a real stretching time for my faith. I have been ministering in the same place for the past 8 years, the church that I was brought to faith in and with people I have known for up to a decade. But in many ways these circumstances make it difficult for me to reach a new level with my relationship with God.

It's not that I am complacent, or totally unchallenged, but God wants to finish a work in me, to make me more mature and complete and I can not do that where I am.

I want to challenge you, it doesn't matter if you are a pastor or not. Where are you in your relationship with God? Is your faith complete? What is the last thing he entrusted to you? Where you faithful or has your faith stagnated?

My observation is that when we fail at the task at hand most people just plain give up. They say "I've failed God" and cease to look for the opportunities he is bringing their way.

Is that you? You can continue to grow even after failure if you repent. When you admit your failure to God, I can almost guarantee that he will find another way for you to grow and mature in him.

Well well well, today I have reached a milestone in my ministry, study and Christian walk.

Today I put in the mail my application for endorsement as a Pastor in Churches of Christ NSW. Endorsement is basically the equivalent to ordination in most other denominations and it affords me no restrictions on the tasks I may perform in the church.

I was told by the coordinating body that I was basically pre-aproved and just needed to get the documentation in but it's still an exciting time and I'm a little nervous waiting for it to come back!

Please pray for me, I know that during times like this the enemy likes to get in my ear and tell me I am not deserving of such things even though I know that it's not true.

I had the pleasure of catching the train with a friend this morning. This friend and I debate and solve all the worlds problems every time we get together, it's a great iron sharpens iron time.

Out conversation momentarily touched on exclusivity and how it affects us. Consider this...

One day I bought the Serenity DVD box set, my wife and I watched it, enjoyed it and loved it. We lent the box set to this same friend and his wife, they watched it, enjoyed it, loved it and became fanatical about it :)
Not long after they ordered their own copy which didn't come in a cardboard box, rather it had a fancy smancy tin box.
Well I felt ripped off and envious of my friend because I didn't have the fancy tin box. So annoyed was I that I planned to go out and buy it.

Stop, hammer time!

What's going on here? I soon came to my senses and realized that my friend didn't really have anything more than I had, and even if he did, what does it matter?

There seems to be something wired into us that quests for the biggest, newest and shiniest objects. The tin box, the larger house, the best looking wife (I win there suckers! :)

I believe that this is part of our sinful nature that we can redeem. Instead of lusting after the better house or car or XBox, how about we redirect our desire into seeing God's will be done for the poor in our community. Let us boast about how there is no one in need in our community and spur the next town over to do the same.

I've been reading a lot about monastic orders recently and I think that they had something going for them, let's spurn the desire to accumulate treasures on earth and instead build up our heavenly storehouse!

It's about credibility, would you follow a pastor who built up his house instead of the church? The call to be an emerging pastor is in this detail, being counter to the consumer driven culture of this world.

Personally, I'm still trying to get the balance right but that's a step in the right direction.

I've been polishing up my CV lately in anticipation of applying for a new ministry position somewhere. When I say polishing up I actually mean creating from scratch because I've never really had to apply for one.

So far my paid pastoral employment is as a visiting speaker to churches and a part time wage I draw from my church to support my college tuition. I've held a lot of roles but never have I applied outside of this church for a job.

I'm not jumping ship yet but I sought out some advice about what to put on a CV for ministry and there were some things I didn't think about.

There's experience of course. I detailed different ministries I had been involved with and my role within them. I included a very brief rundown of my secular work experience (my I. T. CV runs to about 6 pages at the moment) as well as something about my passion.

The advice I received from the head of leadership development for my denomination (the guy who also co-ordinates a lot of jobs) was to include two sections. Firstly "What I contribute to the team" and secondly "What I want to learn from your team".

Both of these gave me pause for reflection, this isn't just a job, ministry is a calling (something I actually said in my "Passion" section) so what is it exactly that I believe God is calling me to do? To learn and to teach?

In secular employment you can take a job that isn't a 100% fit because you know you can just move on (very Gen X/Y of me) but being called to a place to minister should take a great deal more of reflection, prayer and introspection, shouldn't it?

So emerging pastor, let's ask the questions, what do I bring to the team and what do I want to learn before we put in that application form. Perhaps God may want to inform us a little bit here.

These thoughts have been circling my head for a little while, it's about our ambition.

I consider myself a very ambitious person, I look for opportunities to develop, grow, excel and climb higher in my corporate position. I've had to do a lot of thinking about how ambition reconciles with ministry because the drivers are not the same.

Sure if I was (still) a Catholic I could seek opportunities to become a bishop (although being able to only move diagonally doesn't really appeal to me) or a cardinal. But as a run of the mill protestant there are not many opportunities to climb the ladder.

There is a school of thought that suggests that we subliminate (push down, bury) our thoughts and feelings such as ambition in the context of ministry but I don't really like that idea much. I feel that God has made me this way for a reason and it can be used for his kingdom if only I could figure out how.

Sublimination also seems to be a counterproductive exercise because that suppressed ambition may express itself in a more unhelpful way down the road.

I've thought that I could apply my ambition to a goal such as winning as many souls as possible but on the face it that always seems so contrived an answer. We should all showing the gospel to people but if I base my ambition on it I will be falsely disappointed if someone does not come into God's family. It's a dangerous thing to base your ambition on something out of your control, after all it is the Holy Spirit that convicts.

The working draft of my thinking lately places ambition as motivation towards effectiveness in the broader sense.

Being effective in ministry to paraphrase Paul (2 Timothy 2ff) is to be a soldier of Christ, to be an athlete striving and to be a farmer working hard each day.

If my ambition is to be redeemed it has to be towards these goals, to be an effective soldier of Christ by listening to my commanding officer at all times, not being distracted by fleeting fads and thoughts. To be an effective athlete I need to be in training each day and to be an effective farmer I need to get up each day and do what needs to be done, not putting off the planting, sowing or reaping until another day.