Jared Wilson says some things I agree with.
(which means they must be true… I know…)
Pitched at the USA scene, it rings true in Australia, as well.
Here’s a taste:
… a Time Magazine article … talks about young pastors reluctant to go to a place where there’s no Starbucks, and even of older pastors and mentors telling these young guys they are too talented or too creative to pastor in small or rural towns. You know, because those places are wastes of time.
I can’t think of sentiments more antithetical to real ministry.
When I left a three year old church plant in suburban Nashville to assume the pastorate of a 200+ year-old church in rural New England, a close friend of mine said, “You’re going to kill your career.” He was just (sort of) joking, of course, but it wasn’t the first time I’d hear something like that. (I should mention that since making this move, my “career” — if by that one means writing/speaking opportunities — has actually increased, and I actually pastor a larger church here in rural Vermont than I did in suburban Nashville.) But I told him, flatly, “Good.” The day I begin thinking of ministry as a career is the day my ministry career begins to be a big fat pile of FAIL. By God’s grace, I am what I am and do what I do, and this means going where I’m called and hoping he increases, not me.
We’re supposed to decrease, you know?
I am glad more and more pastors are planting churches in the city. The cities need them, and more of them. I can’t think of a single church planter I know personally who is a selfishly ambitious flag-planter. (But I know the selfish flag-planters are out there.) Still, I’d love for more young guys to nail Starbucks and the corner pub and shopping malls and public transportation to the cross and go plant and pastor where you’re more likely to hear a cow moo than a car honk. Country folk are real folk. And they need the gospel too. A lot of evangelical churches in outlying areas are praying desperately that crop after crop of young pastors and aspiring church planters will grow up and show up.
As professionalization captured the evangelical pastorate, churches in small town America began drying up. It’s where old pastors go to retire. It’s where the untalented go to do second rate ministry. Even the one or two conferences recently about ministry in small town settings were led by megachurch pastors and were predicated on how to build a big church in a small town.
Does anyone see the connections between Jesus’ mustard seed ministry and ministry in marginalized America? You almost don’t even have to contextualize all that sower/soil, house-building, sheep and field stuff! It’s plug and play Gospels in rural America.
Is God really calling more people to the cities and suburbs than to the outlying areas? Or do we just think he is?
Read it all here, with quotes from Tim Keller and links to the TIME article.
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