David Murray ponders whether 20 questions originally framed for prospective entreprenuers would also apply to prospective pastors, and which if any would need to be ammended ‘Reality Check For Would Be Pastors’:
1. I am willing to lose everything.
2. I embrace failure.
3. I am always willing to do tedious work.
4. I can handle watching my dreams fall apart.
5. Even if I am puking my guts out with the flu and my mother passed away last week, there is nothing that will keep me from being ready to work.
6. My relationship/marriage is so strong, nothing work-related could ever damage it.
7. My family doesn’t need an income.
8. This is a connected world and I don’t need alone time. I want to be reachable 24/7 by my employees, customers, and business partners.
9. I like instability and I live for uncertainty.
10. I don’t need a vacation for years at a time.
11. I accept that not everyone likes my ideas and that it’s quite likely that many of my ideas are garbage.
12. If I go into business with friends or family, I am okay with losing that relationship forever if things end badly.
13. I don’t have existing anxiety issues and I handle stress with ease.
14. I am willing to fire or lay off anyone no matter what.
15. I am okay with being socially cut–off and walking away from my friends when work beckons.
16. I love naysayers and I won’t explode or give up when a family member, friend, customer, business associate, partner, or anyone for that matter tells me my idea, product, or service is a terrible idea, a waste of time, will never work, or that I must be a moron.
17. I accept the fact that I can do everything right, can work 70 hours a week for years, can hire all the right people, can arrange amazing business deals, and still lose everything in a flash because of something out of my control.
18. I accept that I may hire people that are much better at my job than I am and I will get out of their way.
19. I realize and accept that I am wrong ten times more than I am right.
20. I am willing to walk away if it doesn’t work out.
I think that one dimension that is not touched on the collegial aspect of ministry, particularly in function presbyterian and reformed situations.
Q.9 is a hoot.
J.C. Ryle Quotes is worth a bookmark. A brief quote is provided each week-day.
Last Wednesday we were reminded that: ‘Preaching Is Essential To Church Health’. Check it out.
Danny Hyde is about to have a new book published under the title ‘Welcome To A Reformed Church’. As its title suggests, the book is intended as an introduction for those who are joining the fellowship of a presbyterian or reformed congregation.
Details and commendations at ‘Meet The Puritans’.
Bulk purchase options available from Ligonier Ministries.
Redeemer City To City continues to feature an eclectic range of material. Here’s a post from Arie Boven in which he summarises the work of Sydney Greidanus in the area of exemplary versus redemptive-historical preaching.
Overcoming Preaching Dilemmas: Lessons from Sidney Greidanus
The article is of interest as preachers should start with the text, identify how God’s redemptice purpose is addressed and then apply that to the hearers.
While we’re stretching our minds thinking about preaching apparently John Piper quite likes Stanley Hauerwas’ essay ‘Preaching As Though We Had Enemies’.
Christians in modernity thought their task was to make the Gospel intelligible to the world rather than to help the world understand why it could not be intelligible without the Gospel. Desiring to become part of the modernist project, preachers and theologians accepted the presumption that Christianity is a set of beliefs, a “worldview,” designed to give meaning to our lives…
The moral threat is not consumerism or materialism. Such characterizations of the enemy we face as Christians are far too superficial and moralistic. The problem is not just that we have become consumers of our own lives, but that we can conceive of no alternative narrative since we lack any practices that could make such a narrative intelligible. Put differently, the project of modernity was to produce people who believe they should have no story except the story they choose when they have no story. Such a story is called the story of freedom and is assumed to be irreversibly institutionalized economically as market capitalism and politically as democracy. That story and the institutions that embody it is the enemy we must attack through Christian preaching.
One day you may preach at someone’s installation, ordination or induction.
You could do a lot worse that to borrow this outline from Ray Ortlund.
“Fulfill your ministry.” 2 Timothy 4:5
Looking Timothy straight in the eye, so to speak, with irresistible moral authority, Paul passes the baton to the next generation of Christian leadership. What does Paul want Timothy to understand and accept at this defining moment?
Fulfill. There is a grandeur to every man’s ministry. It is a massive opportunity not to be diminished but to be exploited every day, to the end. Let all small thoughts of gospel ministry be put out of our minds. The world, and even the church, may not grasp how much is at stake. But we can fill our minds with this awareness: “I have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel (1 Thessalonians 2:4). I don’t minister for his approval; I minister with his approval. I can go for it.”
Your. Not, “Fulfill my ministry.” But, “You have your own calling from God. A new era of blessing can dawn through you. Offer yourself to God, and reach for your destiny.”
Ministry. That is, service. “Be mastered by One Great Thing. It will cost you. But if you’ll give yourself to it, you will help people, in Jesus’ name and for his greater glory.”
Jared Wilson identifies: ‘Non-Negotiables For The Missional Pastor’.
Part of me didn’t want to post it, but I know Wilson’s right.
Finally, Michael Mckinley at Church Matters interacts with a couple of sources and produces a post: ‘Spiritual Warfare, Humility, and the Pastor as Chief Repenter’. Which pretty much had me at the title.
Think of all the things people expect a pastor to be: chief executive offier of the church, chief Bible expert, chief father and husband, chief visionary…
But what would happen if pastors were committed to being the chief repenters? What if we publicly confessed and forsook our sin? Can you imagine how Satan’s inroads into our lives and congregations might be cut off?
That’s your lot.
mgpcpastor's blog 
Hi Gary,
I hope pressy ministers don’t really think that some of the things on that list at the top of this post apply to them. And most people have difficult things about their situation, not just those in pastoral ministry.
You would have to strike out at points 7 and 10, at least if you were referring to average pastoral ministry in an established denomination. (In the PCV there is 5 weeks annual leave, which is a week longer than the community standard for annual leave). Annual leave, a regular stipend and home provided would seem like utter luxury at times to people struggling with establishing a business.
I don’t like to jump at posts like this, because I’ve been really enjoying reading your blog and finding it very helpful. However, as someone who has seen both sides of manse life, from within and without, as well as been in small business, I think it would be helpful if ministers and their families did not grizzle about the pay and conditions (unfortunately I have heard some do this). And anyway, you do not know if some of your congregation actually are doing it tough.
Unfortunately in many congregations we do not develop the kind of relationships in which we have much idea of what each other is going through. In one congregation I belonged to, it took several years of getting to know people, to dawn on me that many, probably most people there seemed to be dealing with some type of ongoing difficulty in life, of a nature which they might not immediately tell others.
Cheers,
Caroline
Your comment about complaining about pay and conditions is absolutely true, and needs to be observed regardless of pay and conditions.
(Which in the Presbyterian situation enable a family to live in modest security.)
Sometimes I mention that I never keep track of public holidays, because long weekends don’t mean much to pastors, (which is true, as a matter of fact they’re a utter annoyance, because people are away), but it really is self-serving and I’m trying to stop it.
Pastors should never reflect on the congregations they serve in a negative way as well.
I can understand that situations can be much less secure outside of a framework like that of the Presbyterian Church of Australia.
The list of questions demonstrates its limitations in business in not recognising the more collegial and voluntary nature of church life.
It also does not recognise that Christian life is not a risk of losing everything, we serve because we have everything and it can never be taken away from us.
But it does reflect something of the intense feeling of isolation and lonlinesss that some are completely unprepared for in pastoral life.
This usually strikes those who have come from pretty healthy church experiences and are then appointed to serve in churches where the spiritual climate is very different.
They are unable to manage parish life as they think they should, but still find themsleves being held totally accountable for negative results.
What sort of questions do you think would serve a more constructive purpose?
I think I’ve got some more constructive material on this line to post over the next few days.
Thanks for commenting, I really think this type of stuff needs to be discussed in a public forum.