On Not Swinging For The Fence Every Time (via Daniel Darling)

Gary Ware

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October 24, 2018

Borrowing an analogy from baseball, Daniel Darling writes about ordinary preachers and their week-to-week preaching ministry.
Having an expectation that the exceptional should be the ordinary experience creates a type of Christian life that is neither sustainable or recognisable from a biblical or historic framework.
From Darling:

This is not an excuse for mediocrity. It’s not a rant against celebrity. Every generation has genuinely gifted servants with ministries beyond their congregations. We should rejoice at their large kingdom impact. “There many not be many noble,” Paul says. But there are some and we thank God for their giftedness.
Still, I wonder if the rest, called to grind it out and preach weekly attempt to be superstars. I wonder if we try too hard, swinging for the fences with every new sermon. When I pastored, I had to fight this weekly.
You might call this the Revival Syndrome or the Camp Meeting Syndrome. Most of us who serve in ministry have experienced one or more of these emotional, life-changing moments, where a single message altered the course of our lives. But if we were to be honest, those sermons might have been catalysts, but it was the patient daily practices of Bible reading, church attendance, prayer, and spiritual mentoring that helped the seed of spirituality blossom.
As a pastor, you want every Sunday to be this meaningful for the people in your congregation. Yet, there is something wrong if we expect every message, every worship service to be like that revival or camp meeting.

source

Patiently Nurturing Culture Change (via Ron Edmondson)

Gary Ware

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October 23, 2018

Ron Edmondson offers five observations regarding culture change in a local church:
They’re pretty sensible, but can be overlooked because of enthusiasm or over-confidence.
Taking the time to get to know the church and its existing culture (in contrast to its behaviour; trying to understand why people are doing what they’re doing) is necessary and respectful.
It also provides insight that enables adaptions that help changes to be specifically suited to the location rather than just being imported because they worked somewhere else.
Edmondson’s first four:

Figure out where the culture most needs to be changed.
Figure out what is working that you can build upon.
Begin to get a vision for the future. What does it look like?
Communicate. Communicate. Communicate.

And his final point:

Steadfastly work the plan.
It will take longer than most leaders hope it will. The longer the present culture has been engrained the longer it will take to change it. Protect your soul during the process, take frequent periods of rest, surround yourself with some encouragers, but stick with it.
The process to get there won’t be easy, but when the culture is improved you can really start having fun again.

Read the whole post here.

An Unnecessary Pastor Rather Than The Manager Of A Religious Company (via Eugene Peterson)

Gary Ware

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October 23, 2018

Eugene Peterson has died at the age of 85.
The internet will provide you with plenty of eulogies, should you search them out.
A contemplative presence whose wisdom invited thought and consideration, even when the reader did not agree with his conclusions.

In his collaboration with Marva Dawn, published as the book The Unnecessary Pastor, Peterson identifies the third of three ways in which pastors should be unnecessary – countering the culturally shaped expectations that seek to define a pastor’s role, definitions that are at odds with a biblical expression of the role.
Peterson has already addressed the forces exerted by culture and even the pastor themselves to skew the nature of pastoral practice, and he then turns to the influence congregational expectations can make their contribution.
I don’t the situation Peterson addresses has abated in the twenty years or so since he wrote these words:

3. And we are unnecessary to what congregations insist that we must do and be: as the experts who help them stay ahead of the competition. Congregations want pastors who will lead them in the world of religious competition and provide a safe alternative to the world’s ways. They want pastors who lead. They want pastors the way the Israelites wanted a king — to make hash of the Philistines. Congregations get their ideas of what makes a pastor from the culture, not from the Scriptures: they want a winner; they want their needs met; they want to be part of something zesty and glamorous.
I am in conversation right now with a dozen or so men and women who are prepared to be pastors and who are waiting to be called by a congregation. And I am having the depressing experience of reading congregational descriptions of what these churches want in a pastor. With hardly an exception they don’t want pastors at all — they want managers of their religious company. They want a pastor they can follow so they won’t have to bother with following Jesus anymore.

The Unnecessary Pastor, Marva Dawn and Eugene Peterson, Eerdmans, pg 4

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