Emerging Pastor

I can't go into specifics because of confidentiality but a recent situation that comes partially under my authority has me contemplating the line between the public and private life of the pastor and whether such a division actually exists.

It has always been my belief that leaders in the church are to be held much more accountable for their actions because of their position. It's certainly a Scriptural concept and one that makes me shudder a little. How that will work in heaven I'm not sure but it's something that God keeps placing in my head, especially as I grapple with sin in my own life.

The pastor will never be perfect, will have their failings. The Apostle Paul had a thorn in his side that continually bugged him and God deliberately didn't remove it. I may exegete that this is because it kept Paul humble but that is speculation.

In my own life I deal with sin, with patterns from the past that keep raising up to try and grab me back into their bondage once more and as much and has hard as I've prayed and as much and as hard as I've fasted and as fervent and as honest and as real I have been with myself God has refused so far to take it away from me.

What are we to surmise from this, how do we reconcile God leaving us vulnerable to temptation while holding us to a higher standard? Is he just mean or is there a higher reason for it?

Someone once said that "Character is who you are in the dark". The real you is the version of yourself who no one meets, no one sees, no one witnesses. If this is the real me, the one in the dark place, then my vulnerability to certain sin is my check and balance and the method of God to help me grow and overcome.

That is the private life of the pastor, the place where we struggle.

The post is really a short treatment of the issue, I can see that it needs more fleshing out over the next few weeks. What are your thoughts about it?

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.

Sunday and Tuesday night I brushed off ye olde electric guitar and was involved in a very intimate worship experience with my church.

It happened quite by accident, all the night service crew (except for one) who were rostered on had to bail at the last minute so the drummer (the only original), another worship leader and I just sat on some stools and bashed it out. The drummer was playing a large bongo and the other worship leader and I were playing guitar and singing.

That Sunday night I really felt the presence of God in the worship time, at the end of a couple of songs I engaged in some "free worship" and it was a blessed time with the Word, communion and ministry afterwards.

The three of us were asked to lead worship on Tuesday night during our monthly prayer gathering and we readily agreed, everything was about the same but I just didn't feel it.

So it begs the question, what was different, God or me? And what can I learn from this?

My studies recently have caused me to seriously reflect on the differences between the modern and post-modern mind, here is the beginning of my thoughts.

Modern society (modernist thinking) placed it's faith in science and rational / empirical thinking with the belief that the pursuit of science and technological advancement would bring us a better world in which to live.

Modernity is the Apollo space program, taking us all to the stars and leaving microwave ovens, unicorns, sunshine and rainbows in it's trail.

Post-modernism is the Apollo 13. People floating adrift in space, our technology not providing us any answers and leaving us marooned and fighting to survive.

I want to share with you this Scripture from 2 Timothy 2:1-7. This Scripture is the text I'm required to base my message on for my subject on advanced preaching subject techniques.

You then, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others. Endure hardship with us like a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No one serving as a soldier gets involved in civilian affairs he wants to please his commanding officer. Similarly, if anyone competes as an athlete, he does not receive the victor's crown unless he competes according to the rules. The hardworking farmer should be the first to receive a share of the crops. Reflect on what I am saying, for the Lord will give you insight into all this.

When I read this I see Paul profiling the life of an emerging pastor. So lets dissect it!

This semester at college I'm studying an advanced preaching subject, it's all about preaching to the post-modern world and understanding what that means as far as traditional preaching styles and their assumptions go.

One thing I have heard in church meetings has been complaints that the people aren't coming in because we're not preaching 'em like we used to. To that they mean either some real fire and brimstone or some Billy Graham style evangelical message. I've started to see the same thinking begin to creep into my church because one of the services is faltering.

It seems to me that when a church finds itself in a state of decline it does what every other organization does, tries to recapture the past. It remembers the good old days when people were stacked to the rafters and the tithes were bountiful. They look back and say, well we used to sing hymns and preach the Word of God (usually a complaint about the style of preaching not the content) and the people flocked in.

Thinking like this is both right and wrong! It's right thinking because it recognizes that people have changed, they have moved address and we need to change along with them. It's wrong thinking to then say, well we'll just move back into the past and people will follow.

An emerging pastor has the responsibility to track down their post-modern sheep and understand their thinking to reach them in a way that both honours God and listens to people.

Interested in that kind of job?

No, food poisoning isn't a clever theological metaphore, it's a horrid statement of fact.

I seem to be on the mend now but this weekend was pretty much a wipe-out for me. I was supposed to be leading the church in worship this weekend but I realised at 3am Sunday morning this wasn't going to happen. I wont go into any details, you all know what food poisoning does to the body, I'm just thankful to God for my wife who has nursed me through this time (even now as I blog ill lying on the couch) and for those in my church family who picked up the slack for my absence.

Someone once said "Don't make yourself irreplaceable or you will never be promoted", I believe something similar applies to the life of the minister. Not being promoted but rather having people being able to step into your shoes when life takes an unexpected turn.